A Club of One 

PASSAGES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF 

A MAN WHO MIGHT HAVE 

BEEN SOCIABLE 



WITH MARGINAL SUMMARY 

By THE EDITOR X 



K- 



^ ^ 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1887 



rA 






Copyright, 1887, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



U-'^TS.^O 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge '. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 




EDITOR'S PREFACE 

A PRETTY good-st^ed drawer, locked and 
padlocked, was found filled with the manu- 
scripts from which these Passages were taken, 
I have presumed to give them the title they 
bear, the author of them having departed 
this life. It is very evident they were not de- 
signed for the public. They were written 
purely for occupation, there is not a doubt 
of it. The author, a reader and thinker, 
though an invalid, could not he idle. He 
read and he thought, and sometimes he re- 
corded. He has said some things that have 
not been said before, and has said them in his 
own way. Except in the earlier pages, almost 
all that related to his aches and ailments has 
been omitted, — the editor knowing perfectly 
well that his many complaints would very 
soon weary if not disgust the reader, when 



cfL 



iv Editor's Preface 

the purpose constantly in view was to enter- 
tain and enlighten him. Another effect has 
been to keep down the bulk, as the fashion 
seems to be going out of rating books by the 
pound. 




CONTENTS 

PAGE 

y4 Birthday Lamentation p 

His Left Ear Now jo 

Snowing Again 12 

His Hair Trimmed Too Close 77 

An Unaccountable Twitching 14 

The Duke of Queensherry Plan 75 

The Bit of Potato Skin ly 

'' The Abominable Sparrows" 18 

Discharges his Doctor 20 

The Apothecary s Bill 21 

Blue Glass Experience 2^ 

Too Much Blue Glass 24 

The New Doctor .26 

It Rains — Studies Dante 2p 

Continues the Study of Dante ^6 

Exhaustion — Then and Now 40 

The Blinds Left Open 4^ 

Horn-Blowing 4^ 

Marriage of December and May 48 

Importance of Taking Care of his Health ... 5/ 

Hates Disputation • . • . 56 



Tji Contents 

Pledge-Making and Pledge-Taking 60 

The North East JVind 60 

Age and Want ^4 

Town and Country ^^ 

The Children 15 

Is Life Worth Living ? ^^ 

The Stupid Doctors — Old Remedies 82 

Diseased Sensibility 86 

Politeness 9^ 

Compliments P5 

The Lawyers 9^ 

An Honest Man lo-j 

Killing the Devil / 'i 

The Gout Now ^i^ 

Counts his Pulsations //J 

The Man and the Woman 120 

The Professional Invalid 124 

The Professional Invalid Continued /^o 

Foster's Essays — Margaret i^^ 

The Perfect Ballad 140 

Saint Valentine's Day 142 

'< My Books!" 148 

Books! Books! /5' 

The Dance of the Pill Boxes 160 

" My Grindstone Library" 164 

Ancient and Modern Quakerism 172 

Man and Monkey 17^ 

Metaphysics and Political Economy 186 

" Lord, Have Mercy " 188 



Contents vii 

Evil- Communications /p5 

Sin and Bile 199 

The Thoroughly Cultivated Man 204 

The Business 0/ Reforming 212 

Eyes for the Blind 219 

The Burden and the Mystery 22^ 

A Fogy, and Not a Reformer 2^5 

Another President Elected 240 

Dimensions of Hell 240 

The Human Brain 241 

*< My Wife" 249 





A CLUB OF ONE 

H, the burden of my life ! Why a birthday 

, , lamentation. 

am I spared to see another 

birthday ? Poor miserable me ! 

an aggregation of miseries. 

I live to suffer, and suffer to 
live. I have used drugs enough to poison 
all the fishes in all the oceans. Doctors 
many and doctors different have visited 
me, times innumerable ; but to how little 
purpose ! According to the Zendavesta, 
the number of diseases wrought by the 
witchcraft of the evil one was ''nine, and gg,gg9dis- 
ninety, and nine hundred, and nine thou- 
sand, and nine times ten thousand." 
Ninety - nine thousand nine hundred and 
ninety-nine seems to me to be a low esti- 
mate. The devil, I believe, has been in- 
dustriously inventing and introducing new 
ones ever since the sacred book was writ- 
ten. Considering his genius for mischief, 
and his hatred of the human race, the arch- 



eases. 



JO A Club of One 

Doubled enemy must have doubled the number, at 
smcezoroas. ^^^^^^ .^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ thousand years 

since Zoroaster. Indeed, when I think of 
what I have myself endured, I conclude 
The number thc numbcr incomputablc. Everything 
^^omMt- gj^Qj.|- Qf (ieath and absolute insanity I have 
suffered, in body and in mind. In the 
thirty years since I began to suffer ex- 
clusively (never having seen a well day in 
all that time), every organ has again and 
again been attacked, and every function 
disturbed. I have been the victim, I do 
believe, of every torture known to man- 
kind. But for the hopes of orthodoxy, I — 
But I am forgetting the powders the doc- 
Pain in his tor Icf t mc f or the pain in my great toe 
— one to be taken every two hours, till 
the pain leaves or decidedly abates. The 
powder was hardly down when another toe 
was attacked ! Two powders now, I sup- 
pose, every two hours. My poor toes ! 

Worse and worse, after a wretched night. 
In his left It is my left ear now that is tortured. 
The acuteness of the pain may be guessed 
upon reflecting that the nerves of hearing 
(according to Dr. Holmes) clasp the roots 
of the brain as a creeping vine clings to 
the bole of an elm. If I am to live, I want 



great toe. 



ear now. 



A Club of One ii 

my two ears, that I may execrate the clock 
at every tick, as I lie awake the long nights. 
The ear — what a wonderful arrangement 
it is ! The eyes shut ; other organs are 
suspended ; but the ear is ever open and 
attentive, — ready to alarm at any disturb- 
ance. That striking and quaint passage in Passage 
Rabelais occurs to me : " Nature, I am fa7s! 
persuaded, did not without a cause frame 
our ears open, putting thereto no gates at 
all, nor shutting them up with any manner 
of inclosures, as she hath done upon the 
tongue, the eyes, and other such out-jut- 
ting parts of the body. The cause, as I 
imagine, is, to the end that every day and 
every night, and that continually, we may 
be ready to hear, and by a perpetual hear- 
ing apt to learn." The mighty, miserable 
Nimrod ! Thinking of my ear, I think of Nimrod. 
his miserable end, and I think of some- 
body suffering beside myself. Enraged 
(according to a tradition of the Arabs) at 
the destruction of his gods by the prophet 
Abraham, he sought to slay him, and waged 
war against him. But the prophet prayed 
to God, and said, " Deliver me, O God, Abraham's 
from this man, who worships stones, and ^'''^•^^''• 
boasts himself to be the lord of all things ; " 
and God said to him, "How shall I pun- 



12 A Club of One 

ish him ? " And the prophet answered, 
" To Thee armies are as nothing, and the 
strength and power of men Hkewise. Be- 
fore the smallest of thy creatures will they 
perish." And God was pleased at the faith 
God sent a of the prophet, and He sent a gnat, which 
^''"' ' vexed Nimrod day and night, so that he 

built a room of glass in his palace, that he 
mio^ht dwell therein and shut out the in- 
sect. But the gnat entered also, and passed 
by his ear into his brain, upon which it fed, 
and increased in size day by day, so that 
the servants of Nimrod beat his head with 
a hammer continually, that he might have 
some ease from his pain ; but he died, after 
The gnat i7i Suffering these torments for four hundred 
w«>/ years. Alas ! (to think of it) who hath not 
his gnat of memory, reflection, or retribu- 
tion? 



400yeu'rs. 



snmving Suowiug again ! The great ugly flakes 

again. , . . ,_,, . . 

are covermg everythmg. The air is raw 
and chilly. I hate snow. There is noth- 
ing interesting about it. It has the ex- 
pression of a corpse. It is an obstruction 
and a nuisance. I shall not be able to take 
my accustomed ninety-two paces on the 
c(n>eri7,g his vcrauda to-day on account of it. I feel a 
shroud. chilliness gradually covering my skin like 



A Club of One i ^ 

a shroud, freezing the milHons of pores, 
thousands by thousands. The tediousness 
of the process, as well as the distress of 
it. My poor bones ! The marrow of them 
now seems to be freezing, too. What am 
I to do 1 It is a question of woolens, per- a gtcestwn 
haps. I tried white — it is too chilling ; i "^ ^"^ ^'"• 
tried red — it is too irritating. I believe I 
shall try pink — a delicate shade. I am 
resolved upon pink — the flush of a glow- 
ing sun-burn on a tender part. Pink it 
shall be. If satisfactory, I shall tell no- 
body. The precious secret ! My poor 
brain is not to be worried discovering re- 
lief for other people. Let them suffer ! 
Who cares for me } Brayed in a mortar 
may all the world be, for aught that I care. 
It vexes me to think that I have nobody to Nobody to 
think for me. I believe that if my brain him. 
could rest for a while I should be better. 
But the necessity of thinking, thinking 
— always of myself. Poor me ! Nobody 
pities me. The universal selfishness ! Ah, 
my eyes are ready to burst out with suffer- 
ing, as they say Swift's did. I can hardly 
see the lines I write on. My wife — 

My barber, in cutting my hair this morn- His hair 
ing, trimmed it too close, and a terrible d^eT^ 



/^ A Club of One 

cold is the consequence. I feel a conges- 
tion traveling up my spine at a dangerous 
rate. Parts of me unknown to me till now 
are being pulled to pieces pitilessly. The 
eider-down cushion presses hard against 
my shoulder like the burden of Atlas. The 
mischief must be driven out. Water ! hot 
water ! The feet must be boiled. Ah ! 

Boils his an hour's boiling, and a few chapters of 

■^"'' Job. I feel better. 

" Smoothed the pillow, the throbbing brain 
Survives the pang, and sleeps again." 

A twitching Last night one of my calves was seized 
TJves^ " with an unaccountable twitching. It 
seemed a forerunner of something serious. 
An infinite piercing followed, like ten thou- 
sand needles. Piercing, piercing — like 
pins piercing a pippin, but with inexpres- 
sible pain. It fairly took my breath away 
for a time. The doctor was dispatched 
for. He came, but not in a very good 
TJie brute of humor. The brute has no feeling. I pay 
him my dollars and he should feel for my 
woes. He listened — not like a man — not 
even professionally — but like an insen- 
sible machine. My blood boiled like ^tna. 
I had no weapon to strike him with. I 
could see that he questioned the descrip- 



A Club of One 75 

tion I gave him of my sufferings. This 
morning I was better, thank the Lord ! 
The stinging, penetrating pains had left 
me ; but no thanks to the monster's dis- 
gusting remedy. I did n't take his miser- mdnH take 
able bolus — big enough for an elephant. 



An idea! The old Duke of Queens- The Duke o/ 
berry paid his physicians on the plan anTchiZse 
adopted by the Chinese emperors, — so'^'"'"' 
much per week for keeping him alive. Ex- 
cellent ! with the privilege of discharging 
them at any time for offensiveness or in- 
humanity. The creatures like money, and, 
employed on that principle, they would be 
more apt to be faithful, encouraging, and 
sympathizing. I have known so many of 
them, in my long career of distress, — of 
every grade and of every school, — from 
the Sangrado type, with his thunder and 
lightning, to the latest disciple of Hahne- 
mann, with his infinitesimals and attenuated 
moonshine, that, as a necessary evil, I feel 
myself as competent as any one to judge 
of them. * Capital ! I think I shall try concludes to 
the Chinese and Queensberry plan. My ^''■^'^* 
wife — But an instance in point before I 
forget it (which deserves to be set down), 
illustrating the profession — almost without 



1 6 A Club of One 

an exception. They are a lying, mercenary 
set. An intelligent friend of mine, broken 
seriously in health by the agitations and 
successes of the civil war-time, quitted his 
comfortable home and large business, and 
went abroad for treatment by an eminent 

The Paris Paris physician. He did not improve, after 
many visits and prescriptions ; and the 
great doctor, perceiving that his patient's 
patience was failing, recommended him 

^"°Tdct ^^^y ki^^^y to another great doctor in Ber- 

in Berlin, lin. My poor invalid friend, before pre- 
senting the letter of introduction he bore 
with him, not a little shaken in his con- 
fidence after the long, unsuccessful treat- 
ment, had the curiosity and good sense to 
break the seal and read the message. It 
was in good French (laconic enough), and 
to this effect : "Paris, Sept. 8, 187-. My 
dear Doctor : This will introduce to you 

Mr. K , of Cincinnati, United States of 

America. Plenty of money. Nothing the 
matter with him. Rejoicing to send you 
another fat patient, I remain yours, frater- 
nally. J. X ." Rascal and hypocrite ! 

jonadaband Jonadab aud Tartuffe combined. The let- 

Tartiiffe . 

combirud. ter was delivered, but only as a basis for 
some good, eloquent, native - American 
swearing. My friend, after lingering a few 



A Club of One ly 

weeks at Nice and Wiesbaden, returned 
home, and soon recovered from his dan- 
gerous illness, but without the aid of any 
more distinguished doctors. 

At breakfast this morning I inadver- swaiiawsa 
tently swallowed a bit of the skin of a skL 
baked potato, about the size of a shirt but- 
ton. It was hard and chippy, and hurt as its teeth like 
it went. Its edge must have teeth, like a saw. 
circular saw. I feel it sawing its way, 
through the thirty feet of passage, and the 
fear is that it may lodge in the caecum. 
The idea is horrible, and hurts my poor 
brain as the potato skin does my imperiled 
stomach. It cannot be that a man in my 
disordered state, with such an infinity of 
awful experiences, could have been inat- 
tentive or careless in so important a matter 
as eating. But I must take to inspecting Determifies 
dangerous articles of food with a handglass, da^igerotcs 

articles of 

and arrange for a stronger light to eat by. food. 
Two or three ugly obstructing fruit trees 
must be cut down. Oh ! Ah ! Horrors ! 
The remorseless potato skin is ripping its 
way. Why does n't the doctor come } Lin- 
gering, I suppose, stupidly, at the bedside 
of somebody that is dying, to the neglect 
of his patient who always pays him, and 



1 8 A Club of One 

whose existence is of such importance to 
himself. But, he comes — the laggard ! 

The doctor Hcartlcss again ! He does not seem to be 
so much alarmed as myself at my situation. 
He counsels relaxing remedies, and quiet. 
A very slight change of position, I feel, 

The only might bc fatal. The only hope is in the 
absolute expulsion of the dangerous sub- 
stance — my poor stomach being too weak 
to be counted on as an auxiliary. The 
doctor is well-read in his profession, and 
says there is no case of the sort mentioned 
in the books ; but the gravity of my con- 
dition does not seem to be appreciated 
by him. Anxiety about it ought to whiten 
his hair. Than the fanged edge of a bit of 
potato skin, there could be nothing more 
appalling. The slightest movement, and I 

A pang that fccl a pang that is awful. The doctor, I 
think, only feigns alarm ; but tries to sym- 
pathize, — which is something unusual. 
His other sick and dying patients must be 
cared for by his youthful copartner and 
nurses : all the resources of his wisdom 
and experience must be expended on me. 



The^ aiomi- It was thc dcslgn that I should sleep late 
this morning, but the abominable English 
sparrows waked me long before daylight. 



rows. 



A Club of One ig 

Their multitudinous chatter was not only 
disturbing — it was malicious ; as there can 
be no doubt of their happiness over my 
miseries. They peeped impishly through 
every space in the blinds big enough to 
admit a sunbeam. There was something 
Mephistophelean in their mocking irony. 
Cursed be the man — the enemy of the Acurseupon 

. . . the inatt who 

peace of all civilized Americans — who im- imported 

, . them. 

ported them. He should be incinerated, 
and his ashes blown by the four winds to 
the four quarters of the globe. The de- 
testable little pests should be exterminated 
by all means. They have no friends but 
enthusiastic farmers and gardeners, who 
insist that they live mainly on worms and 
insects. And they stubbornly refuse to 
admit that they drive away other birds ! 
As to that, however, I do not care ; as, in 
my present humor, the destruction of all 
birds would be pleasant enough to me. 
Love for them, so flippantly expressed, is Love/or 
only, I believe, an affectation. I would /ectcuion. 
offer a generous premium for the heads of 
every hundred sparrows ; or, what might 
be better and more effective, a very large 
sum to the leader and authority in ladies' 
hats in Paris to make them fashionable, 
as an adornment, for a single season. By 



20 



A Club of One 



Dirty little 
things. 



A single 
sparrow 
spoiled the 
whole pot. 



whatever means, it is of the utmost im- 
portance that they should be gotten rid of. 
They are dirty Httle things. It is neces- 
sary for very well-dressed people to adopt 
every precaution to protect themselves 
against them. Only yesterday a precious 
decoction — mellowing in the sun — to be 
used as a lotion on certain parts of my 
poor body — was incautiously left un- 
covered, and a single sparrow defiled the 
whole pot. They are too dirty to eat, or 
they would long since have been consumed 
by the hungry. 



Discharges 
the doctor. 



Another crisis. I have been obliged to 
discharge my doctor. The fellow was more 
and more offensive to me, and finally be- 
came unendurable. So I sent for him this 
morning to dismiss him. The Satanic grin 
on his face when he came in was some- 
thing exasperating. His utter want of 
sympathy, and growing tendency to say 
disagreeable and impertinent things, pre- 
pared me to be rude to him ; but I re- 
pressed myself in good taste, and begged 
him to sit down. It is a wonder the neces- 
sities of the creature had not made him 
humble, or at least considerate. How a 
man as poor as he is can be insolent to 



A Club of One 21 

those who feed him is past my compre- 
hension. He had drawn and drawn upon 
me, till the balance I owed him was trifling. 
Ever since I asked him to spend a night 
with me — a night of unexampled torture 
— and sleep on the comfortable sofa, so 
long the bed of my poor departed dog — 
he has shown a very ugly disposition to- s/wwedan 
wards me, m spite of his eriort to conceal non. 
it. His ridiculous pride, I suppose, was Hisridku- 
piqued by the proposition ; but what busi- 
ness has a poor devil of a doctor with 
pride, I should like to know. Pride is a 
luxury appropriate to the opulent. And 
the smell of tobacco always in his cloth- 
ing was as offensive to me as his cursed 
haughtiness. Some outdoor air had to be 
let in after his visits to dissipate the 
poison, which as often endangered my ex- 
istence. The disgust of my olfactories at 
tobacco is serious enough, but the rude 
shock of the freezing air off the snow- 
covered earth is deadly. The relief that I ReUc/in be- 
feel in being rid of the miserable creature him. 
might be considered a feeble counterfeit of 
pleasure, if such a visitation were not im- 
possible to an enduring sufferer like me. 

The regular vexation. The quarterly 



22 A Club of One 

The guar, bill of thc apothccary Is just- in. A man 
^thi^afoth-^ of less experience in such things would be 
ecary. ^x\nq,w to madncss by them. The many 
items, and the swindling aggregate ! It 
would not do to question the rascality, 
as being robbed is preferable to being 
gossiped about by the robber. I very well 
Compact of Understand the compact of villainy exist- 
"^'^' ing between the druggists and the doctors. 
The profits on the detestable drugs are so 
enormous that the druggist can well afford 
to pay the doctor an enormous per cent, 
on his prescriptions. I have heard in- 
credible stories of their petty partnership 
meannesses, which have been more than 
confirmed by my own unfortunate experi- 
ence. An article not worth a dime is 
charged a dollar for. A Latin name for a 
nothing makes it something, and dignifies 
the swindle. No wonder the apothecary 
rides in his carriage, and impecunious doc- 
tors, like the one I have just discharged, 
Pocketftihof carry pocketfuls of Habanas. The latter 
a anas, j^g^^g ^^y ^^ supply thcmselves, at con- 
venience, from the cases of the generous 
druggists who compound their prescrip- 
tions. The thing has been (or something 
like it) from Hippocrates, and will be, till 
the crack of doom. A check for it only 



A Cliih of One 25 

settles the bill for the quarter, — it does 
not check the villainy, but encourages it. 
It seems, indeed, unpleasantly like com- 
pounding it. But I am a poor reformer. 
I hate reformers. 

This morning I had the plain glass re- Blue glass. 
moved from the south windows and the 
blue glass put in : the sash-frames contain- 
ing it, I mean. Temporary only, of course, 
as the influence of the blue light is too 
stimulating to me to be risked long at a caretobe 
time. I have tried it thoroughly, and be- 
come convinced of its singular efficacy. 
Pleasonton, perhaps, claims too much for 
it, but blue glass, none the less, is a bene- 
faction. Some of my most distressing ail- 
ments have been relieved by it. Care, of 
course, must be exercised in its use, as ex- 
cess, I know, would be hurtful. I wonder 
its supreme value as a remedial agent has its supreme 
not been more generally acknowledged, remedial 
As a stimulant, merely, it is wonderful. 
Upon me, as such, its effect is supernatural. 
I sit now (not too far from the window) 
with the supernal light pouring over me. 
It influences me so — is so stimulating — 
that I thought a moment ago I could de- 
tect something like an impulse of pleasant- 



24 A Cliih of One 

ness in my being. An effect like that, — 
with nothing of the violent or spasmodic 
in it, — I am prepared to say, is next to 

Blessed be miraculous. Blessed be blue glass ! It is 
7iegass. ij^possible to estimate its value to civiliza- 
tion and mankind. Systems of education, 
systems of philosophy, of medicine, of re- 
ligion even, may be upturned by it. We 
do not think of the remarkable influence 
that color exerts upon the character and 

ififluenceof conduct of men. Rosch and Esquirol af- 

color npoft . , . 

character firm that dycrs of scarlet become choleric 

atid condtict. •' . 

by virtue of occupation alone. I am satis- 
fied that the extraordinary growth that 
man would attain — intellectual and moral, 
as well as physical — by judicious and 
scientific use of blue glass would be mar- 
velous. We can yet only begin to conjec- 
ture — much less to know — the universal 
benefits to result from, the great discovery. 

Indulgence, as usual, is followed by evil 
Too much effects. I spent too many hours in the 
blue light, and am suffering from the con- 
sequences. Four or five hours is the ut- 
most that I have been accustomed to risk 
in it, but yesterday I extended the time to 
six. The effect of the excess was alarm- 
ing. A flush of exaltation came upon me 



blice glass. 



A Club of One 25 

like a paroxysm. I hurried on my blue 
flannel, which, as a precaution, I always 
use to let myself gently down to normal 
wretchedness, that nature at last seems to 
have suited me better to endure than com- 
parative comfort even — to say nothing of 
happiness. The blue flannel I find very Efficacy of 

r r-ii • 1 11 T1 1 blue flannel. 

safe, followmg the blue light ; they seem 
indeed, in a manner, to be concurrent 
remedies. And as a further precaution, 
after several hours in the blue rays, I sleep 
for a night or two between blue blankets. BiueUan- 
They are an mvention of my own, and a 
perfect specific. Though last night my 
faith in them was a little shaken, as they 
did not quite prevent the always to be 
apprehended aches that are almost sure 
to follow a course of blue glass — aches 
that my mother used to call, to her com- 
plaining children, " growing pains " — sure 
evidences of the prodigious value of the 
discovery as an elixir and vivifier. Ac- 
companying the *' pains " were visions and visions and 

. . scJiemes. 

schemes, numerous and varied — such as 
disturb the heads of youth, and make them 
anxious to try themselves in the "muddle " 
of life. It seems a thousand years since I 
first learned that the former meant growth 
and the latter hope — anticipating man- 



26 A Cluh of One 

hood. I dreamed of the time agone, with 
a feeling suggestive of something faintly 
like pleasure : — 

" I fled to the fields I had traversed so oft, 

In life's morning march when my bosom was young ; 
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft, 

And knew the sweet strains that the corn-reapers 
sung " : — 

but questioned my identity at the same 
time. That a hopeful boy should have 
A miserable becomc SO miserable a man seemed im- 
possible — against nature. Over and ovet 
I turned in my bed, a hundred times — re- 
sisting, as I best could, the aches and pains, 
and schemes and visions. The result of 
it all is, a miserable condition, and I have 
Sends for scut for a doctor, — the best that I could 
Tcto7. think of in acute and dangerous cases. I 
hope, at least, that he is not a donkey and 
an ignoramus, to torment me as his pred- 
ecessor did. 

sojne obser- I thiuk I can tolcratc my new doctor. 

vations upon , ... .,-.. t 

the new doc- Hc sccms mtelli2:ent, with the mstmcts or 

tor. ^ 

a gentleman. The longer we talked the 
more I perceived his penetration. As Em- 
erson said of Goethe, he seemed to see out 
of every pore of his skin. His language 
shows him to be a scholar, and I hope he 



A Club of One 27 

has some general knowledge of literature. 
In that case I need not repress a tendency 
to literary reference, as he will understand 
me when I talk. It seems a shame that 
the hundred worthies on my shelves should 
be silent — being never referred to, or en- 
couraged to speak. As we conversed, I 
noticed that his eye ran over them with 
an expression of intelligence and enthusi- 
asm. I die for fitting companionship. 
The sordidness of men ! How they are 
wrapped up in themselves and their little 
interests ! A wise doctor should be wise Reqnisitesto 

, , . T T 1 111 ivisdom m 

in everythmg. He should know men — thepro/es- 
all sorts of men. In questions of race he 
should see behind and before — progenitors 
and inheritors alike. Philosophies and re- 
ligions should be familiar to him. Books 
and their makers should be the objects of 
his affectionate regard. He should, like 
Lamb, kiss a volume of Burns with ten- 
derness, and bow with reverence before 
Shakespeare or Bacon. This man, to some 
extent, seems to be the possessor of such 
a sentiment. His intelligence has the re- 
flection of breadth and the look of wisdom. 
His apparent liberality of judgment seems 
to be the result of facile intercourse with 
various minds. The commerce of intellect, 



28 A Club of One 

it is truly said, loves distant shores. The 
small retail dealer trades only with his 
neighbors ; when the great merchants trade, 
they link the four quarters of the globe. In 
Four great Brooklyn, onc night, I met four such. They 

merchants, i t -i i i 

seemed to nave been everywhere and to 
have seen everything. They talked, not of 
processes, but of results. Every sentence 
was freighted with wisdom, and was com- 
pact enough for a proverb. Their eyes as 
well as their minds seemed to have a meas- 
uring and weighing habit. This man, of 
course, is not a man of that type. If he 
were, he would not be a drudging doctor. 
Manner of His considcratc and attentive manner 

the new phy- 

skian. pleases me. It cannot be wholly the re- 
sult of training. Selfish, no doubt, he is ; 
everybody is that. If he is prompt, sub- 
missive, and faithful, I shall try to put up 
with the objectionable in him as it de- 

Headand vclops. His head, I believe, is more than 
an average one ; but his heart — of what 
quality and composition is that } Is there 
feeling in it } — red blood } — the blood of 
a man } If when I groan or cry out in a 
paroxysm of pain the laughing machinery 
should play about the corners of his mouth, 
I should feel like killing him. I will not 
be gibed at by a monkey of a doctor. The 



A Club of One 2g 

way he dusts his feet and lifts his hat and 
removes his gloves is in his favor. He is not 
constantly stroking his beard and clearing 
his throat in a Sir Oracle way. The per- The per- 

. fumeryhe 

fumery he uses ; I cannot quite make out ^^es. 
what it is. It is not agreeable, and not 
quite disgusting. I shall have to ask him 
the ingredients of the stuff. You cannot 
guess from the smell. A dung-hill at a 
distance, said Coleridge, sometimes smells 
like musk, and a dead dog like elder-flowers. 
He is a believer in blue glass, I am pleased a believer 
to know, and carries his faith to the point ^^ ''^s''^^' 
of devotion. Blue glass he unqualifiedly 
pronounces a good thing ; but believes with 
me that, as with every other good thing, 
one may have too much of it. My blue 
woolens, as a gradient, so to speak, or anti- 
dote for excess, he is in raptures over — 
especially the blue blankets. He promised 
me to think profoundly of the general sub- 
ject of blue woolens, as an auxiliary in the Blue wool- 
blue glass treatment, and make such sug- 
gestions as to shades of the same as might 
occur to his scientific judgment. 

It rains, and it rains ! The beautiful it rains. 
rain ! The clouds go rolling round, like 
big black sponges, squeezing themselves 



^o A Cluh of One 

out on the chimney pots. The gutters run 
ink. There are people to say it is dread- 
ful. But I like it ; it is in harmony with 
my feelings. I hate what they call cheer- 
fulness. Irving's description of a rainy day 
is one of his best productions. It makes 
dreariness attractive. Happiness, after all, 
is, I believe, but a bit of acting. Life is 
not a comedy — it is a tragedy. No life 
is satisfactory. " Youth," says Beacons- 
field, *' is a blunder, manhood a struggle, 
Lifeadisap. old agc a rcgrct." The most fortunate are 
pomtment. jjg^ppQJj^^g^^ Stephen, in the story, un- 
derstood it : " 'T is a' a muddle." The Jap- 
anese have a proverb that epitomizes the 
unsatisfactoriness of life : " If you hate a 
man, let him live." Their little children, in 
school, are taught to repeat a verse which •# 
in English would run in this wise : — 

" Color and perfume vanish away. 
What can be lasting in this world ? 
To-day disappears in the abyss of nothingness ; 
It is but the passing image of a dream, and causes 
only a slight trouble." 

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher ; all is 
studies vanity. It is on a day like this that I partic- 
ularly like Dante's Inferno (the other parts 
of the Comedy I do not like). Gary's trans- 
lation, with Dore's illustrations, is delight- 



Dante. 



A Club of One ^i 

ful ; though I do not like the text so well 
as John Carlyle's literal rendering. In the 
latter you get at the sense, as in Hay- 
ward's translation of Faust. Scholars, I 
think, should translate poetry, not poets. 
The Iliad of Pope is confirmation. Pope's Bitso/crit- 

, icism. 

genius IS conspicuous : not quite so much 
so as Homer's : Homer you never quite 
lose sight of. Carlyle's Inferno is Dante's; 
you never think of the Scotchman. And 
it is a very Murray's as a guide-book. I 
make free use of it. There are two of you 
with Virgil. You go at leisure through the 
pleasant scenes. You read the inscription inscription 

over the 

over the gate as you enter : " I hrough me gate. 
is the way into the doleful city ; through 
me the way into the eternal pain ; through 
►me the way among the people lost. Jus- . 
tice moved my High Maker ; Divine Power 
made me, Wisdom Supreme, and Primal 
Love. Before me were no things created, 
but eternal I endure. Leave all hope, ye 
that enter." You cross the river Acheron. 
On its shore all that die under the wrath of 
God assemble from every country to be 
ferried over by Charon. He makes them 
enter his boat by glaring on them with his 
burning eyes. You go into Limbo. The umbo. 
only pain the spirits there suffer is, that 



i2 



A Club of One 



The infer- 
nal judge. 



Criticises 
Dare's pic- 
ture. 



Cerberus. 



they live in the desire and without the hope 
of seeing God. You come into the pres- 
ence of the Infernal Judge. " There Minos 
sits horrific, and grins ; examines the crimes 
upon the entrance ; judges, and sends ac- 
cording as he girds himself. When the ill- 
born spirit comes before him, it confesses 
all ; and that sin-discerner sees what place 
in hell is fit for it, and with his tail makes 
as many circles round himself as the de- 
grees he will have it to descend. Always 
before him stands a crowd of them. They 
go each in its turn to judgment ; they tell, 
and hear; and then are whirled down." 
Sublime dignity ! Dore's picture, it strikes 
me, is not a good one. He makes the tail 
of the Judge a serpent, and does not con- 
ceal the head. An oversight, I should*^ 
think, of the artist. You go thence into 
the place appointed for epicures and glut- 
tons, who set their hearts upon the lowest 
species of sensual gratification. An un- 
varying, eternal storm of heavy hail, foul 
water, and snow, pour down upon them. 
They are lying prostrate on the ground ; 
and the three-headed monster Cerberus 
keeps barking over them, and rending 
them. Dore's conception, in one of the 
heads, is perfect. Hell itself (of the sen- 



A Club of One ^^ 

sual) is in the face. It is besotted, as well 
as merciless. Thence to the region of the 
prodigal and the avaricious. Plutus is at Piutus. 
the entrance, with " clucking voice." Vir- 
gil speaks to him : '* Peace, cursed wolf ! 
Consume thyself internally with thy greedy 
rage." '' As sails, swelled by the wind, 
fall entangled when the mast gives way ; 
so fell that cruel monster to the ground." 
Disgusting creature, as he sits crouching 
out of view. The artist's genius is con- 
spicuous in the figure. The greediness of 
the eyes is avarice itself. In the next pic- rheprodi- 

••HI- 1 T 1 gal and the 

ture he vividly depicts the prodigal and the avaricious. 
avaricious: they are forever rolling great 
weights, and forever smiting each other. 
" To all eternity they shall continue butting 
■Jll^one another." Every muscle seems to be 
breaking. Thence across the broad marsh, 
in the fifth circle, where ostentation, arro- 
gance, and brutal anger are punished, to 
the "joyless city" of Dis. We cross a tju joyless 
plain, all covered with burning sepulchres. 
Tongues of fiercer flame speak out of them. 
And so on we go, and on, we three, by the 
river of blood, past the obscene harpies, to 
the plain of burning sand, where an eter- 
nal shower of fire is falling ; on again to 
the crimson stream that runs down to the 



^4 A Club of One 

centre of hell, when a strange and mon- 
strous shape comes swimming up through 

Geryon. thc dark air. It is Geryon, the uncleanly- 
image of Fraud. " His face was the face 
of a just man, so mild an aspect had it out- 
wardly ; the rest was all a reptile's body." 
Upon the " haunch of the dreadful animal " 
we mount, and are conveyed down to the 
eighth circle. He moves himself with many 
a sweeping round, and, setting us down, 
bounds off, "like an arrow from the string." 

Flatterers, Ou thc way, wc scc flattcrcrs, " immersed 

cers! in filth," and panders, and lying seducers, 

hurrying along — meeting one another — 
all naked, and scourged by horned demons. 
We stop not to see the peculators, and as- 
sassins, and tyrants, but take a look at the 

The wicked " wickcd hcll-bird " on the margin of the^^ 
boiling pitch — glaring, ready to strike. 

The hypo- The hypocrites are interesting, as they 
walk in slow procession, heavy laden w^ith 
cloaks of lead, which are gilded and of daz- 
zling brilliancy on the outside. A thief, 
with a load of serpents on his haunch and 
a fiery dragon on his shoulders, comes shout- 
ing along. The shadow of Mahomet, rent 
asunder from the chin downward, displays 
the conscious vileness and corruption of his 
doctrines. From the arch of the tenth 



crites. 



A Club of One ^5 

chasm are heard the waihngs of falsifiers of 
every kind. Thence along the brim of the 
Pit, to mighty Antaeus, who takes us in his Aidceus. 
arms and sets us down "into the bottom of 
all guilt," or lowest part of hell, where 
eternal cold freezes and locks up Cocytus, 
the marsh that receives all its rivers. Here 
is Cain, who killed his brother Abel. Then 
to the end — the last circle of Cocytus, 
which takes its name (Judecca) from Judas 
Iscariot, and gaze in admiration at the 
arch-traitor Satan himself, " Emperor of satan him- 

self. 

the Realm of Sorrow." He too is pursued 
by his own sin. All the streams of guilt streams of 
keep flowing back to him, as their source, %lgbciT 
and from beneath his three faces (shadows 
of his own consciousness) issue forth the 
mighty wings with which he struggles, as 
it were, to raise himself ; and sends out 
winds that freeze him only the more firmly 
in his ever swelling marsh. " From Beelze- 
bub as far removed as his tomb extends is a 
space, not known by sight but by the sound 
of a rivulet descending in it, along the hol- 
low of a rock which it has eaten out with 
tortuous course and slow declivity." We 
enter by that hidden road, to return into Return to 

, tlie bright 

the bright world : mountmg up through '' a world. 
round opening the beauteous things which 



^6 A Club of One 

Heaven bears ; " and thence we issue out, 
** again to see the stars." 

Continues All honor to Dore for his pictures of 
^Dafde^^ "'^ Antseus ! They are tremendous, — the 
mighty conceptions of genius. But he did 
not attempt the Devil ! After his success 
with the poet, in the frontispiece, I wonder 
that he hesitated. There is gloom there 
that is profound. It is not at all strange 
that the people should have pointed at the 
man with such a face, and said to one an- 
other as he passed along, '' There goes the 
man who has been in hell." The Knight 
of The Sorrowful Countenance had a smil- 
ing face compared with the poet of the 
damned. Pictures so vivid and interesting 
as these of Dore's it is an enjoyment to 
ADantesgm study. Hc should havc illustratcd a pas- 
fromHeine. sagc m Heme that is so Dantesque m de- 
scription. It is of a remarkable quarrel in 
a little hospital at Cracow where he was an 
accidental spectator, where it was interest- 
ing to hear the sick mocking and revil- 
ing each other's infirmities, how emaciated 
consumptives ridiculed those who were 
bloated with dropsy, how one laughed at 
the cancer in the nose of another, and 
he again jeered the locked jaws and dis- 



A Club of One ^y 

torted eyes of his neighbor, until finally 
those who were mad with fever sprang 
naked from bed, and tore the coverings 
and sheets from the maimed bodies around, 
and there was nothing to be seen but mis- 
ery and mutilation. Strange ! that the lit^ Face o/tize 
erary outlaw who describes to us so faith- w"""^ 
fully the scene should have had a face full 
of all tenderness — as youthful and beauti- 
ful as Keats' or Hunt's. And so I go on, 
on — curiously and reflectingly — lingering 
over the matchless achievement of the 
poet and the illustrations of the artist. I 
contemplate the miserable, and participate 
in their wretchedness. In an access of Abnormal 

^ ^ ' 1 misery. 

abnormal misery, such as comes to me 
often in these later days of unendurable 
existence, I feel myself hardly less wretched 
than the miserable I have been contem- 
plating. Hence the interest I cannot help 
expressing. It is but community of feel- 
ing. Proverbially, misery loves company. 
Goldsmith expressed the necessity in a Goldsmith. 
letter to Bob Bryanton, though the gentle 
Goldsmith's misery, I imagine, must have 
been more a matter of fancy than of reality. 
"You," said he, ''seem placed at the cen- 
tre of fortune's wheel, and, let it revolve 
ever so fast, are insensible to the motion. 



^8 A Club of One 

I seem to have been tied to the circum- 
ference, and whirled disagreeably around 
as if on a whirligig." To another, about 
the same time, he wrote, '* I have been for 
some years struggling with a wretched 
being. What has a jail that is formidable ? 
I shall at least have the society of wretches, 
and such is to me true society." The 
waiiings of wailings of the damned take the tone of 

the damned. _. . 

my own suftermgs. Their miseries are 
real, and not fanciful. They are fated, 
too, and sympathy expended upon them is 
wasted. Their pains are penalties ; mine, 
I feel, are vengeful and causeless. Enough 
perdition here, certainly, for me. Paradise 
only could compensate. An infinity of de- 
light must balance a life-time of anguish. 
The damned, consequently, I can hear howl 
and rage without being distressed. Justice 
doomed them, and the divine wrath is un- 
Heiianeces- quenchablc and immutable. Hell is a ne- 

sity. 

cessity. As I go through, with Dante, I 
find places for my enemies. Those who 
take pains so far to conceal and qualify 
their obduracy and selfishness as to now 
and then make a show of sympathy for 
me, I can imagine in the presence of* the 
Infernal Judge, confessing themselves, and 
being whirled down, according as the coils 



A Club of One 59 

of the remorseless tail determine, to suffer 
and writhe with the multitude of their 
fellows, ever and ever, without hope. And 
here I cannot help remarking upon some- Something 

very i7iter- 

thing very interesting in the poet. Time ^sting /« the 
and again he seems touched by the wretch- 
edness he encounters, and gives unmistak- 
able sign of sympathy. As in the case of 
meeting the impulsive and surprised lov- 
ers, Francesca and Paolo : he fell to the 
ground as if dead, when he heard their 
painful story : though the manifestation 
may have been to a degree selfish, as the 
sigh of Francesca — " There is no greater 
pain than to recall a happy time in wretch- 
edness " — must have reminded him of his 
sainted Beatrice. " I fainted," he says, Beatrice. 
" with pity, as if I had been dying ; and 
fell, as a dead body falls." The weakness 
was natural in view of the painful remem- 
brance. All in all, I think the historian 
and poet of hell would have been com- 
panionable to me. He could have under- 
stood my distresses, and entered deeply 
into the bottomless abysses of my anguish. 
When I groaned, his wisdom would pene- 
trate the cause. When I writhed, his ob- TJtepoetof 
servations of the damned would diagnose companion. 
the paroxysm. When the universal pain 



^o A Club of One 

prostrated me, as Pascal was prostrated, 
hopelessly, his quick sense of misery could 
conjecture the incalculable endurance. But 
I must live on, I suppose, to the end, with- 
out intelligent and proper sympathy. The 
common mind and common heart are in- 
capable of it. It would require a genius of 
observation in misery and the heart of a 
celestial to properly sympathize with me. 

Exhausted Thc tlmc I spcut at my desk day before 
by-writing. ygg|-gj.^^y ^-^^ ^]^g ^^^y bcforc that about 

exhausted me. Time was when I could 
write and write, without limit. The words 
ran away from my pen with the flowing 
ink. At a time, too, when I had nothing 
to say. I had not learned to unlearn what 
I had learned, and knew nothing. We 
gather and throw away as we ascend and 
descend the hill of life (wisdom I will not 
call it). Once I saw a little child, in swad- 
dhng clothes, on the floor. Some one gave 
it a big red marble (too big to put into its 
mouth), which it took in one hand ; then 
another marble was given to it, which it 
took with the other. Hardly had the little 
thing time to realize its possessions, when 
a bright golden one appeared to vex it. 
There were three marbles, now, and it 



The little 
child. 



A Club of One 41 

had but two hands. Another and another 
and another was presented to it. What 
was it to do } It dropped and seized and iveariedby 
seized and dropped, till, exhausted by its ef- 
forts, it fell asleep — the coveted marbles 
rolling away — not one of them all remain- 
ing in its possession. So it is with all, — at 
the top and at the bottom of the hill of life : 
empty - handed as the little child — the 
same at the end as at the beginning. Now, 
whefn I have something to say, I have not 
the strength to say it. Literary schemes 
dreamed out, all had to be abandoned. I 
had at one time something very compen- 
dious in contemplation. Years of effort 
would have been necessary to achieve it. 
Long ago I destroyed all vestiges of prep- 
aration. Note-books and note-books went Note-books 
into the fire, and a large part of my cher- 
ished hopes went with them. They were 
so much of myself. The batteries of the 
brain — how many ! — had been operated 
to produce them. The brain ! The mi- 
nuteness of its parts and the magnitude of 
its achievements ! A billion of the starry 
brain-cells, says Holmes, could be packed 
in a cubic inch, and the convolutions con- 
tain one hundred and thirty - four cubic 
inches ! Going too long, the great scheme 



destroyed. 



42 A Cluh of One 

The great abortcd. The loss of the half - formed 

^Iborted. thing left a void that has never been filled. 
Empty seemed everything for a space, and 
the ruin it made has many a time reminded 
me of the lady on the point of marriage, 
whose intended husband usually traveled 
by the stage-coach to visit her. She went 
one day to meet him, and found instead of 
him an old friend who came to announce 
to her the tidings of his sudden death. 
She uttered a scream, and piteously ex- 

"^^■^„ claimed, "He is dead!" But then all 
consciousness of the affliction that had be- 
fallen her ceased. " From that fatal mo- 
ment," says the recorder of the incident, 
*' this unfortunate female daily for fifty 
years, in all seasons, traversed the distance 
of a few miles to the spot where she ex- 
pected her future husband to alight from 
the coach ; and every day she uttered in a 
plaintive tone, * He is not come yet ! I 
will return to-morrow ! ' " My poor wasted 
preparatory effort is dead, buried, — I wish 

The solemn it could bc forgottcu. A rccord of the 
solemn entombment is inscribed in all the 
waste places remaining. And here I am 
writing about the figment, when I ought 
to be in bed between my blue blankets. 
My wife — 



A Cluh of One 4^ 

Incautiously a section of the blinds was The blinds 
left open, and the blazing sun waked me 
long before my accustomed time to rise. 
" Sun ! how I hate thy beams ! " once ex- 
claimed Dr. Johnson, — I imagine under 
similar circumstances. I quoted the lexi- 
cographer with emphasis. The sun ! — it 
makes everything too visible ; and the 
Doctor, with his enthusiasm of sadness, and 
observation, which, " with extensive view," 
had surveyed ^' mankind from China to 
Peru," was moved by disquieting disclos- 
ures. In the shadows only, and through observation 

■, , -, . r ^ "-"^ intro- 

smoked glass, as it were, men 01 the type spection. 
of the Doctor should scan themselves and 
their fellow mortals. Too much light is ex- 
posing, as a slab of wood turned over on a 
bright sunshiny day in June reveals a mul- 
titude of hideous creatures, of manifold 
kinds, which scamper and crawl away in 
terror at the sun's all-seeing rays. 

I am vexed to madness. A fellow with in/iiriated 
a horn in a top room of a tall building in bioweZ"' 
the neighborhood was tugging and tugging 
away for hours last night at a few notes of 
detestable '' Shoo Fly," to the annoyance 
or horror of every one who heard, over and 
over, ever and ever, the same miserable 



44 A Club of One 

few notes. The rascal, blowing so hard 
and exhaustingly, had to have air in abun- 
StTi ^^^^^' ^^ ^^s two windows were wide open, 
and the diabolical sounds produced by his 
instrument had free exit and opportunity 
for torture without stint. It is a wonder 
that Dante, in all the regions of the 
damned, found no place for horn-blowers 
.1::>S"" Hell- fire, kept within proper bounds," 
seh^s. Fuseli said to Rogers, "is no bad thing." 

Limbo might do, if the fellows attempted 
only the tolerable ; but they keep blow- 
ing away forever at what they themselves 
and everybody must hate. A vile tune 
runs round the world, and is the universal 
fashion. Hated, too, all the time it is 
being played, or sung. Strange to think of 
whhtiing. —everybody hates whistling, and every- 
body whistles. It is the thing that police- 
men should be specially instructed to knock 
men down for doing. '' Shoo Fly " in 
fashion, you climb to the top of Popocate- 
petl and you will find a man there whis- 
tling it. As, in riding up town in the even- 
ing, you see an article of dress adorning 
the persons of thousands which struck you 
as a novelty when you rode down in the 
morning. Strange, how imitative men are 
— monkeys are not more so. And the uni- 



A Club of One 4^ 

versal selfishness ! The horn-blowers and 
the piano-players never think of how they 
are vexing nearly all who hear them. Now 
and then, only, an interested person is 
found to say it is agreeable. In some 
houses there is an instrument of torture — histruments 
stringed, springed, padded, or bored — in 
every room, which must be endured, — as 
the very people would punish you for com- 
plaining of it who complain themselves. 
The sensitive lady with the sensitive sick 
child, whose nerves are torn to pieces by 
the squeaking '' organ " of a neighbor, 
would be furious if her young lady daugh- 
ter's practicing on the piano by the hour 
were complained of in the least degree. 
But that aggregation of discords and hor- a brass- 
rors — a brass - band — who can compass 
it .? who invented it } A friend of mine 
was at the Boston Jubilee the other day, 
where there were twelve thousand musi- 
cians, and he said he had time and again 
heard a village brass - band of a dozen 
pieces make more noise than the whole 
twelve thousand. But, to think of it, nearly 
every one, at some time in life, has blown 
a horn, or made a noise on an instru- 
ment of some sort, to the torment, to a 
greater or less extent, of every other man 



46 



A Club of One 



Memorable 
horns. 



A t Jericho. 



A t Rotices- 
valles. 



N>.mrod''s 
horn. 



FingaVs 
voice. 



who heard him, and he should submit to 
endure Hke inflictions of others without 
murmuring. Horns, too, have played so 
great a part in the history of this world, 
that perhaps one should not quite lose all 
consideration for them. Their effect on 
the wall of Jericho is memorably recorded 
in Holy Writ. Sometimes I have wondered 
that the walls of buildings in which brass- 
bands were playing did not tumble down 
in the same manner. At Roncesvalles, 
Orlando, in despair, blew so terrible a blast, 
that he rent his horn and the veins and 
sinews of his neck ; and Charles, who 
heard it eight miles off, was hindered by 
the traitor Ganellon from coming to his 
assistance. The sound of Nimrod's horn, 
which Dante heard, on his way, with Vir- 
gil, to the lowest part of hell, was louder 
still. "I heard," says the poet, "a high 
horn sound so loudly that it would have 
made any thunder weak." The voice of 
Fingal, in Ossian, was hardly less loud 
and terrible than the horns of Orlando 
and Nimrod. When he raised his voice, 
" Cromla answered around, the sons of the 
desert stood still, and the fishes of the 
troubled sea moved to the depths." At 
the very times when you most dislike to 



A Club of One 47 

hear what they call music, your ears are 
most open and sensitive to it, and nothing 
will shut it out. I have heard a music- 
box — set agoing by some sleepless old 
bachelor — through a dozen brick walls. 
I have heard a hand-organ playing a mile 
away. I have heard a girl singing — a girVs 
screaming, screeching, squalling — when 
my ears were bound up and smothered 
with pillows. Fortunately, the barbaric 
taste generally disappears at manhood, or 
the world would be a pandemonium, and 
filled with imbeciles and incapables. The 
taste for music once become a chronic appe- 
tite or passion, all hope of practicalness or 
intelligent application in other fields may 
be abandoned. Patrick Henry played the Patrkk 
fiddle — and he played it well, they say 
— but he was a great orator — the greatest 
perhaps that America has produced. God 
Almightly works inscrutably, his wonders 
to perform. He doth the incredible and 
exceedeth the unimaginable, for his own 
wise purposes. Exceptions he creates or Exceptions. 
permits for encouragement or example. 
The old English divine said of strawber- 
ries, " Doubtless God could have made a 
better berry, but doubtless God never did." 
Doubtless God could have permitted a 



48 A Club of One 

greater nuisance than attempts at music, 
but doubtless God never has. 

I have just received a complimentary in- 
vitation to a wedding. The bridegroom 
was a man when I was a boy. He must be 
a good deal past seventy now. The bride, 
I hear, is not much above twenty. These 
Incongruous iucougruous marriagcs ! The disparity is 
marriages, g^gg^g^j^g^ Softcuing is d.lmost 3. Certain 

consequence. Young women do not know 
what they do when they marry old men. 
Possibly their hope is in the conclusion 
of the song — that the old brass their 
old husbands leave them will buy them 

ivycheriy. ncw paus. Old Wychcrly was wise in 
the matter, and the promise he exacted 
from his young wife is a travesty upon it, 
in the comedian's best vein. I do not 
like to think of it ; I fear the bursting 
of a vessel. The old actor, dramatist, and 
manager, married a girl of eighteen when 
he was verging on eighty. Shortly after, 
Providence was pleased, in its mercy to 
the young woman, to call the old man to 
another and a better world. But ere he 
took his final departure from this, he sum- 
moned his young wife to his bedside, and 

Dying. announced to her that he was dying ; where- 



A Club of One 4g 

upon she wept bitterly. Wycherly lifted 
himself up in the bed, and gazing with ten- 
der emotions on his young, weeping wife, 
said, " My dearest love, I have a solemn Exacts a 



'>romise 



promise to exact from you before I quit from his 
you forever here below. Will you assure 
me my wishes will be attended to by you, 
however great the sacrifice you may be 
called on to make } " Horrid ideas of Sut- 
tees, of poor Indian widows being called 
on to expire on funeral pyres, with the 
bodies of their deceased lords and masters, 
flashed across the brain of the poor woman. 
With a convulsive effort and desperate res- 
olution, old Wycherly' s young wife gasped 
out an assurance that his commands, how- Assures her 

obedience. 

ever dreadful they might be, should be 
obeyed. Then Wycherly, with a ghastly 
smile, said in a low and solemn voice, " My 
beloved wife, the parting request I have to 
make of you is — that when I am gone — 
(here the young woman sobbed and cried 
most vehemently) — when I am in my cold 
grave — (Mrs. Wycherly tore her hair) — 
when I am laid low — (the disconsolate 
wife shrieked with grief) — when I am no 
longer a heavy burden and a tie on you — ■ 
("Oh ! for Heaven's sake ! " exclaimed Mrs. Distress o/ 

^ the poor 

Wycherly, " what am I to do } ") — I com- ^oman. 



50 



A Club of One 



Lines of 
Waller. 



Perverted 
taste. 



mand you, my dear young wife — (said the 
old, dying comedian) — on pain of incurring 
my malediction, never to — marry — an 
old man again ! " Mrs. Wycherly dried her 
eyes, and, in the most fervent manner, 
promised that she never would ; and that 
faithful woman kept her word for life. 
There is not much to be said of incongru- 
ous marriages after that. It tells the story. 
Nothing further could be added to it with- 
out quoting the lines of Waller, On One 
Married to an Old Man, which I would 
rather not repeat. The whole thing is dis- 
tasteful. An old man — shriveled and 
shaky — with a pretty young woman on 
his shrunken arm — is a picture for a satyr 
to grin at, and a philosopher to deplore. 
To be pleased with it would require a per- 
verted taste — suggesting the delight of 
the surgeon, inspecting the blooming can- 
cer, ripe for his pitiless knife. A poor 
young plant is the virgin green, that feeds 
on ruins old. Of right poor food are her 
meals I ween, in his cell so lone and cold. 
The incompatibility ! Only the amalgam 
of mammon could unite such opposites. It 
is Plutus's best work, — at which he swells 
himself to his greatest proportions — jing- 
ling his metallic voice ("clucking voice," 



A Club of 0?ie 5/ 

Dante calls it), and licking his chaps like a 
disgusting great boar. Once I attended a 
wedding of December and May. The tailor December 
had padded the garments of the bride- '''"^^^''y' 
groom, and the jeweler had hung his dia- 
monds on the bride. The smile of senility 
brightened the countenance of the one with 
a stagy light, while all the blood of the 
heart of the other seemed to be concen- 
trated in her shame-stricken face. What 
wonder that Hymen blushed, that satyrs 
grinned, that Virtue felt herself outraged 
and Religion insulted, when Sin, in priestly 
robe, with priestly unction, in awful irony, aw/ui 

. irony. 

pronounced the accursed blessing } The 
occasion was a Vanity Fair indeed, at which 
a Death's head on a Venus figure was every- 
where present ; — at the banquet sitting ; 
peering over the shoulders of beauty ; 
drinking its drink from the goblet of Sa- 
tan ; — the latter an invisible and uhqx- Satananijt- 

1 1 11 • 1 11 1 1 vidble g2iest. 

pected guest, but the happiest, by all odds, 
of the party. I went home a sadder man, 
— with the distressing certainty, that such 
scenes must continue to be acted before 
high Heaven, and increase, with the growth 
of what all men call civilization. 

For two or three days I have suffered frfZ'iy'!'' 



^2 A Cluh of One 

supremely, and the utmost I could do was 
to take care of myself. So long a sufferer, 
I have learned to do that. I should have 
been dead long ago if I had trusted other 
people to look after me. Some very im- 
portant matter they would have regarded as 
a very little thing, and I should be no more. 
So, long since, I perceived the importance 
of attentive, perpetual observation and care 
A little book of myself. I have a little book of duties, 
which I have religiously kept for years, in 
which is set down mathematically every 
little and great thing pertaining to my 
health — when to do certain things, to the 
minute, and when to avoid them altogether ; 
by which means, and by reason of special 
sagacity and acumen in all things in which 
I myself am interested, I have become a 
Agenitisin vcry gcnius in self-observation and care- 
care-ta mg. ^^^^^ (CoddHug, the brutc of a doctor I 
lately discharged called it, on one of his last 
visits.) But, with all my care, I sometimes 
forget a duty, and suffer in consequence. 
When I had concluded my last bit of desk- 
work, the time had arrived for my ninety- 
two paces on the veranda. To my horror, 
and, I fear, my everlasting injury, I took 
ninety-eight ! And, not observing the tem- 
perature as I should (fifteen degrees above 



A Club of One 5^ 

freezing), I wore my light-weight muffler, 
and my heavy gloves, without lining. The 
effect of the excess in exercise, and neglect Effect 0/ ex- 

cess. 

in not sufficiently protecting myself against 
the severe cold, very soon announced itself 
in a cough, the most distressing I have 
had for years. The doctor, however, was 
prompt, with heroic remedies, and I am 
better again, thank the Lord ! The man 
seems to know his business, and me, es- 
pecially. Though he did miscalculate, 
when he asked me my age ! Impertinence ! 
I did n't have the patience or self-possession 
of About's Greek servant, who, when asked Aixntt'sser- 
his age, answered, imperturbably, '' My 
mother wrote it on a piece of paper, and 
the wind blew it away." Better for doctor 
and patient if both had had the tact and 
kindness displayed under not dissimilar cir- 
cumstances by two eminent English peo- 
ple. Horace Walpole, dining (it is stated) waipoieand 
with the Duchess of Queensberry on her ^^^'^^^^• 
birthday (when she had just finished her 
eightieth year), soon after the cloth was 
removed, very politely drank her health in 
a bumper, and added, " May you live, my 
Lady Duchess, till you begin to grow 
ugly ! " ''I thank you, Mr. Walpole," re- 
plied her Grace ; " and may you long con- 



34 



A Club of One 



Age and 
ugliness. 



Fontenelle. 



Living. 



Other peo- 
ple'' s sins. 



tinue your taste for antiquities ! " Ah ! age 
and ugliness ! " I remember," says the 
mother of Fanny Kemble, "the dreadful 
impression made upon me by a story Sir 
Thomas Lawrence told my mother of Lady 

J , (George the Fourth's Lady J ,) 

who, standing before her drawing-room 
looking-glass, and unaware that he was in 
the rooms, exclaimed : * I swear it would 
be better to go to hell at once than to live 
to grow old and ugly.' " Some one asked 
Fontenelle how old he was. He parried the 
impertinence delicately : " Hush ! Pray 
don't speak so loud ; death seems to have 
forgotten me, and you may perhaps put 
him in mind of me." When I get de- 
cidedly better, and the conditions are favor- 
able, I mean to express myself at length of 
this detestable practice. Meantime, discre- 
tion ! To live to do so important a thing 
I must look to living. Living ! Could 
some one teach the art ! We should all 
flock to him to learn. Other people we are 
very wise about. Of ourselves we are ig- 
norant enough. We are constructed to see 
outwardly, says old Montaigne. Other peo- 
ple's sins trouble us. But here I am, run- 
ning on. Philosophy to the moon ! What 
care I for it or anything in comparison with 



A Club of One 55 

myself. It is when I forget myself that I 
suffer most. The consequences of even a 
moment's abstraction have sometimes been 
nearly fatal to me. Dreaming one day 
over some choice sweet amid the treasures 
of my library, I mistook the tiger on my 
rug for the veritable beast from Bengal, 
and started, in a manner to upset all my ms nerves 
nerves. Yet ''■^•^^^• 

" Blessed are the Books, I say, 
For honey of the soul are they." 

And I will enjoy them, and dream over 
them, to the end. Any deprivation before 
that. The doctor, by the by, promises me 
an evening of social converse in my library 
soon. We shall enjoy it together, I think. 
He has the stuff of a thinker in him : I 
hope he has good taste. If he should be- 
tray a liking for the modern society novel The rnodem 
— written to be read without reflection— ""''"'"""' 
as a procession or masquerade is viewed, in 
which one has the slightest interest — I 
could not help losing respect for him. I 
do not expect the man to be a Solomon in 
wisdom, an Emerson in taste, or an angel 
in virtue. I should be unfit for him if he 
were. As to angels, they are fancies. 
Leigh Hunt's conception is the very best, Hunfsidea 
I think, that literature has produced. An "^ '''' ''''^''- 



5^ A Club of One 

angel (he says) is the chorister of heaven, 
the page of martyrdom, the messenger from 
the home of mothers. He comes to the 
tears of the patient, and is in the blush of 
a noble anger. He kisses the hand that 
gives an alms. He talks to parents of their 
departed children, and smooths the pil- 
low of sickness, and supports the cheek of 
the prisoner against the wall, and is the 
knowledge and comfort which a heart has 
of itself when nobody else knows it, and is 
the playfellow of hope, and the lark of as- 
piration, and the lily in the dusk of adver- 
r-wistedinto sity. After such a passage, to be twisted 
into contortions by a toe-ache is to suffer 
a pang of memory and a discouragement 
to hope unknown outside the nethermost 
abyss of the doomed. A twinge of the 
gout, I suspect. 



tat ion. 



Hates dispu- I hatc disputation. My wife — It is not 
discussion. It is next thing to scolding. 
Gentlemen ought to be able to talk without 
disputing ; though no gentleman will intro- 
duce into conversation a subject upon which 
gentlemen might differ with feeling. That 
is the test. A very good man, as the world 
goes, sometimes comes in to sit with me 
an evening. The politenesses have hardly 



man- 
ners. 



A Club of One ^y 

been exchanged, when he asks my view of Bad 
something. The view he at once takes to 
be a deliberate opinion, and falls to com- 
bating it, by giving me his opinion of it, to 
the contrary. As if I cared particularly 
what he thought about it ! He is too good 
a man to cultivate tempestuousness. It 
has been said wisely that no dispute is 
managed without passion, and yet there is 
scarce a dispute worth a passion. Anthony Troiiope. 
Trollope is said to have been very fond of 
disputation for its own sake, and once at 
dinner to have roared out to some one at 
the end of the table, " I totally disagree 
with vou. What was it you said t " Fen- cooper's 

story. 

imore Cooper related to Moore an anec- 
dote of a disputative man. " Why, it is as 
plain as that two and two make four." 
" But I deny that too ; for 2 and 2 make 
twenty-two." On one occasion when they 
were together. Dr. Campbell said some- Dr. Ca7np- 
thing, and Dr. Johnson began to dispute it. johnso?i. 
" Come," said Campbell, " we do not want 
to get the better of one another ; we want 
to increase each other's ideas." When the 
erudite Casaubon visited the Sorbonne casaubon. 
they showed him the hall in which, as they 
proudly told him, disputations had been 
held for four hundred years. " And what," 



55 A Cluh of One 

said he, "have they decided?" It is ex- 
pected by nearly every one that everybody 
will take a side of everything presented, 
and at the same time show very marked 
feelings of partisanship — to the point, 
even, of belligerence. On first nights, in 
In the time thc tinic of Voltairc, when play-goers were 
o aire. ^^^^-^^^ cxcitcd, cach spectator was asked, 
as he entered the parquette, '' Do you come 
to hiss ?" " Yes." *'Then sit over there." 
But if he answered, " I come to applaud," 
he was directed to the other side. Thus 
the antagonistic bodies were massed for 
action. So, in society, every man is ex- 
pected to range himself on one side or the 
other of every subject. Whatever the in- 
sufficiency of information and light, he 
must decide the question, and all questions, 
at once, that may be presented to him. 
Alas ! to reflection nothing could be more 
Mon- ridiculous. Montesquieu, in one of the 

tesquieu. ^^Y^Y^w Lcttcrs, says : '' The other day I 
was at a gathering where I saw a very 
amusing man. In a quarter of an hour he 
decided three questions in morals, four his- 
torical problems, and five points in physics. 
I have never seen such a universal de- 
cider." Unreasonable and intemperate 
partisanship prevents intelligent agree- 



A Club of One 59 

ment. Lord Burleigh, we are told, was LordBur- 
once very much pressed by some of the 
divines of his time, who waited on him in a 
body, to make some alterations in the Lit- 
urgy. He desired them to go into the next 
room by themselves, and bring him in 
their unanimous opinion upon some of the 
disputed points. They returned, however, 
to him very soon, without being able to 
agree. " Why, gentlemen," said he, '^ how 
can you expect that I should alter any 
point in dispute, when you, who must be 
more competent, from your situation, to 
judffe than I can possibly be, cannot ap^ree Doctors dis- 
among yourselves m what manner you 
would have me alter it." Benjamin Lay, a 
violent reformer and enthusiast, was con- 
temporary with Dr. Franklin, who some- 
times visited him. Among other schemes 
of reform he entertained the idea of con- Astocon- 

1 • 1 /^^ • • • /-r-i • vertittg all 

vertmg all mankind to Christianity. This ma7ikind. 
was to be done by three persons — himself 
and two other enthusiasts, assisted by Dr. 
Franklin. But on their first meeting at 
the doctor's house, the three " chosen ves- 
sels " got into a violent dispute on points 
of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. 
The philosopher, who had been an amused 
listener, advised the three sages to give up 



6o A Club of One 

the project of converting the world until 
they had learned to tolerate one another. 
It was Froude, I believe, who sometimes in 
impatient moments wished that the laity 
Disputatums would treat their disputatious divines as 
two gentlemen once treated their seconds, 
when they found themselves forced into a 
duel without knowing what they were quar- 
reling about. As the principals were being 
led up to their places, one of them whis- 
pered to the other, '' If you will shoot your 
second, I will shoot mine." 

A man called to ask me to sign the Total 
Abstinence Pledge. He seemed to be a 
man of sense. I begged him to stay till I 
prepared a little pledge for him to sign. 
piedge-mak- Hc wcut away. As if pledge-making and 
Jfedge-tak- plcdgc-takiug were not for two ! As if 
any one existed who could not be embar- 
rassed by a pledge of some sort. As if 
any man on earth could subscribe to the 
Ten Commandments and the Sermon on 
the Mount without reservation or qualifica- 
tion. As if — 



The north- Thc wlud is f rom the northeast. I felt 
it approaching very sensibly, long before it 
came, and prepared for it as I could. I 



A Club of One 6i 

put on my pink shirt over a chamois jacket. 
I poured some Number Six into my boots. 
I breakfasted appropriately. I looked to 
the window stripping, and double-sashed the 
windows. Forewarned, forearmed. When 
it came I was ready for it. Mad to be Mad to be 
barred out, it went skirring round and 
round for a hole to get in at. It dashed 
down the flue, filling the room with poison- 
ous gases and smoke. It appeared where 
least expected, and where nothing would 
keep it out. Ah, the northeast wind ! — 
the universal dread. Once hear a Britisher 
assail it ! Boreas is a ruffian and a bully, 
but the northeast is a rascal, ^olus has a rascal. 
not such a vicious, ill-conditioned blast in 
his puffy bags. It withers like an evil eye ; 
it blights like a parent's curse ; is less kind 
than ingratitude ; more biting than forgot- 
ten benefits. It comes with sickness on 
its wings, and rejoices only the doctor and 
the sexton. When Charon hoists a sail, it 
is the northeast that swells it ; it purveys 
for famine and caters for pestilence. From 
the savage realms of the Czar it comes 
with desolatino: sweep, laden with moans Laden with 

'=> '^ ^ ^ moans. 

from Siberian mines, and sounding like 
echoes of the knout ; but not a fragrant 
breath brings it from all the rosaries of 



62 A Club of One 

Persia, so destitute is it of grace and char- 
ity. While it reigns, no fire heats, no rai- 
ment comforts, no walls protect — cold 
without bracing, scorching without warmth. 
It deflowers the earth, and it wans the sky. 
The ghastliest of hues overspreads the face 

Nahire of things, and collapsing nature seems ex- 

ing. piring of cholera. The cock in the barn- 

yard is sullen and solitary ; the horse in 
the stable has a whipped look ; the donkey 
at the stack erects his ears, and shows 
metal in his heels ; the pigeons moan, like 
the undercurrent of the brook ; all men are 
shy and silent ; the children are quarrel- 
some and perverse ; the sparrows, even, are 

Engines dumb and comfortless looking ; engines 
groan with their loads, and spit spitefully 
their scalding steam ; engineers see obsta- 
cles at every curve, and shiver ; passengers 
snuggle poutingly into corners, and wonder 
if ever so many disagreeable people were 
in the same space before ; the boy munches 
his apple with tenfold offensiveness ; the 
baby misses the way to its mouth with its 
candied fist ; the pug on the rug snaps and 

Marr(m) suarls Hkc mad ; marrow congeals ; the spi- 
nal column gives sign of insecurity under 
the burden of a leaden brain. Alas, alas ! 
A northeast wind must have been blowing 



qongeals. 



A Cliih of One 6^ 

to account for an incident at a military exe- incide?tt in 
cution in Hyde Park long ago — mentioned ^ ^ ^^ • 
by Gilly Williams. A grave man, witness- 
ing it, turned about, and said to a by- 
stander, " By G — , I thought there was 
more in it ! " And shot himself very soon 
afterwards. A northeast wind must have 
been blowing to account for an event in Event in 
Paris streets the day Robespierre was guil- streets. 
lotined — noted by Carlyle. From the Pa- 
lais de Justice to the Place de la Revolu- 
tion, it is one dense stirring mass ; all 
windows crammed ; the very roofs and 
ridge-tiles budding forth curiosity, in strange 
gladness. All eyes are on Robespierre's Robes-^ 
tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty tumbriL 
linen, with his half-dead brother, and half- 
dead Henriot, lie shattered ; their seven- 
teen hours of agony about to end. The 
gendarmes point their swords at him, to 
show the people which he is. A woman 
springs on the tumbril ; clutching the side 
of it with one hand ; waving the other sib- 
yl-like ; and exclaims : " The death of thee 
gladdens my very heart." Robespierre 
[thought by many to be dead] opened his opens his 
eyes : " Scoundrel ! Down to hell with the 
curses of all wives and mothers ! " I can 
imagine an east wind blowing when they 



64 A Club of One 

took Jesus out — bearing the cross for him- 
self — to the place of a skull, and crucified 
him, between two thieves. I like to think 
of something to palliate the crime of Pilate 
and the mob. My Uncle Toby had a word 
to say for Satan, and Burns too, I think, in 
one of his poems. 

Age and Agc aud Want, oh ! ill-matched pair! A 

beggar was just now at the door — an old 
man. Seventy-five years of age, I should 
say, at least. The air was cold, and I did 
not encourage him to linger ; though he 
did not seem inclined to relate a pitiful tale. 
He had evidently seen better days, and ap- 
peared to have a good deal of the pride of 
manhood left. There was nothing of obse- 
quiousness in his manner, and the thankful- 
ness he expressed was in the language of 

Sf^^^' self-respect and intelligence. The Irish 
beggars, as Thackeray describes them, come 
crawling round you with lying prayers and 
loathsome compliments, that make the 
stomach turn ; they do not even disguise 
that they are lies ; for, refuse them, and the 
wretches turn off with a laugh and a joke, 
a miserable grinning cynicism that creates 
distrust and indifference, and must be, one 
would think, the very best way to close the 



gars 



A Club of One 65 

purse, not to open it, for objects so un- 
worthy. An old man, obliged to beg, is a 
pitiable character. I do not like to think of 
the extremity. Preserve, just Providence ! 
(exclaims Jean Paul) the old man from Jean PauVs 

exclama- 

want ! for hoary years have already bent i^on. 
him low, and he can no longer stand upright 
with the youth, and bear heavy burdens on 
his shoulders. I know of nothing more ter- 
rible to contemplate than the inconceiv- 
able poverty and distress of the people of Thepeopuo/ 
Thibet, as described by a traveler in that 
country. There are no plains save flats in 
the bottoms of the valleys, and the paths 
lead over lofty mountains. Sometimes, 
when the inhabitants are obliged from fam- 
ine to change their habitations in winter, 
the old and feeble are frozen to death 
standing and resting their chins on their 
staves, remaining as pillars of ice, to fall Men as pa- 
only when the thaw of the ensuing spring 
commences ! " Did you ever observe," 
asks Macdonald, in one of his novels, " that 
there is not one word about the vices of 
the poor in the Bible — from beginning to 
end.?" *'We talk," said Douglas Jerrold, 
" of the intemperance of the poor ; why, 
when we philosophically consider the crush- 
ing miseries that beset them — the keen 



66 A Club of One 

The mock- suffcring of pcHury, and the mockery of 
Zry". ""^ luxury and profusion with which it is sur- 
rounded — the wonder is, not that there 
are so many who purchase temporary ob- 
livion of their misery, but that there are so 
few." The blessedness of life, remarks 
the Scotch author quoted, depends far more 
on its interest than upon its comfort. The 
need of exertion and the doubt of success 
Life more rcndcr life much more interesting to the 
TotZyZf. poor than it is to those who, unblessed 
with anxiety for the bread that perisheth, 
waste their poor hearts about rank and 
reputation. If men could discriminate be- 
tween needs and wants, what fortunate 
changes would occur in their condition. 
Goldsmith wrote, " Man wants but little 
here below." Man needs but little here 
below, would have been nearer the truth. 
His necessities are few indeed ; his wants 
include everything. They are as hungry 
as his desires. Sense can support herself 
Cariyie. (says Carlylc) handsomely, in most coun- 
tries, for some eighteen pence a day ; but 
for fantasy, planets and solar systems will 
not suffice. It is right that poverty in old 
age should be impressively held up to 
young people, and economy intelligently 
inculcated as the means to forefend it. 



A Club of One 6y 

"■ Ye immortal gods ! " exclaimed Cicero ; cicero. 
" men know not how great a revenue econ- 
omy is." "Economy," said Voltaire, *'is 
the source of liberality." Thackeray, com- 
mending Macaulay's frugality, admonishes, Macauiay's 
" To save be your endeavor, against the ■^'''''^''^'^■^• 
night's coming, when no man may work ; 
when the arm is weary with long day's 
labor ; when the brain perhaps grows dark ; 
when the old, who can labor no more, want 
warmth and rest, and the young ones call 
for supper." An aged husbandman, as the 
German allegory runs, was working in his a German 
rich and wide-spread fields, at the decline "" ^^'^^' 
of day, when he was suddenly confronted 
by a spectral illusion, in the form of a man. 
" Who, and what are you } " said the aston- 
ished husbandman. ''I am Solomon, the ^^/^;,^^„,^/^ 
wise," was the reply, " and I have come to ^"^' 
inquire what you are laboring for .? " '' If 
you are Solomon," said the husbandman, 
" you ought to know that I am following 
out the advice you have given. You re- 
ferred me to the ant for instruction, and 
hence my toil." *' You have," said the ap- 
parition, " learnt but half your lesson ; I 
directed you to labor in the proper season rhe proper 

£ ^ -I • 11 . 1 season/or 

lor labor, m order that you might repose labor. 
in the proper season for repose." 



68 



A Club of One 



Very 

wretched. 



Modern 
humorists. 



The saga- 
cious/ellow. 



I have been very wretched for the last 
few days. Every ill, it seems to me, that 
could afflict a man, has attacked me. Pains, 
pains, the most searching and excruciating, 
in every part of my miserable body. I 
thought again and again that my poor 
brain would split into pieces. The doctor 
seemed attentive and anxious, and his pow- 
ders and drops have brought me to a toler- 
able state again. And he himself continues 
to be endurable, though he did last night 
quote from one of the modern humorists — 
there are dozens of them — who rely upon 
extravagance, bad grammar, bad orthogra- 
phy, and slang, to relieve the essential stu- 
pidity of their pages. Seeing my blank 
expression, he said, "You haven't read 
him, perhaps." I didn't reply. The sa- 
gacious fellow, not to know my detestation 
of such stuff ! Still, he seems a good doc- 
tor, and reads to me sometimes, as a solace. 
He is a natural reader. His reading is like 
good talking. After his allusion to the 
coarse humorist, he read to me, in a charm- 
ing way, one of Zschokke's tales, and I for- 
gave him. Again he declared his intention 
to spend a long evening" with me in my li- 
brary, socially. I want to enlighten him a 



little 



as to one thing. 



His limited means, 



A Club of One 69 

he thinks, will not permit him to purchase 
books, so, I suspect, he has fallen into the 
easily acquired habit of relying too much AneasUyac- 

1 ,1 1 r n • quired habit. 

upon newspapers and such books as tall m 
his way for intellectual food. He pleads a 
want of time too, and sets down to that 
his ignorance of good literature and defec- 
tive literary taste. I hope, when I have 
the opportunity, to give him an object-les- 
son that will cure him effectually of his 
complaints. Ah ! that searching pain in Apaininkis 
my left elbow ! I can hardly hold the pen 
for the agony I suffer ; but I must write a 
little now and then for occupation and va- 
riety. I cannot be always reading, and re- 
cording my pains. (Another book, for the 
doctor's special edification.) I feel myself 
about worn out. Everything distresses me. 
I am tired of the town, — man made it ; I Town and 
pine for the country, — that God made. '^°^"' '^' 
(Pope for authority.) Oh, the noises, the 
noises of the eternal Babel ! The rattling 
milk-carts ; the lumbering ice-wagons ; the 
cries of the street-venders ; the jingle of 
the bells of the horse-cars, day and night, 
that always seem to stop just before my 
door ; the squeaking hand-organs ; the in- 
fernal brass-bands ; the roar and roar of Eoaro/mui- 
multitudinous wheels, wheels ; the whirr of wheeiL 



yo A Club of One 

the locomotive, like a hurricane, — thank 
Heaven, several blocks away ; the dashing 
state carriages till far into the early morn- 
ing, when wise people should be asleep, — 
at least be left undisturbed ; all together, 
enough to hammer the brain into a jelly, 
and destroy every vestige of humanity in 
the soul. How any one should be in love 
with the town is past my comprehension. 
yoh7isonand Johnson thought that when a man tired of 
m%VL'ted London he was tired of his life. Macau- 
X«. ''''' lay was alike infatuated with London. 
Jekyll used to say that, if compelled to live 
in the country, he would have the road be- 
fore his door paved like a street, and hire 
a hackney-coach to drive up and down all 
LamPs day. Lamb had a like aversion to the 

aversion to i i i • 

ike country, country, and pronounced a garden the prim- 
itive prison, till man, with Promethean 
felicity and boldness, luckily sinned him- 
self out of it. For my part, I hate the town 
cordially, and — at times — everything in it. 
The stock-subjects are detestable to me, 
— the last fashion, the last actor, the last 
dance, the last swindler, — in all of which 
you are expected to be profoundly inter- 
ested. The cits will babble away to you 
about evanescent nothings without limit. 
I do not permit them. And their devotion 



A Club of One yi 

and worship of Mammon ! And how they worship of 
submit to the few without a wish to escape 
the despotism ! The common individual 
submits to be an atom, without responsibil- 
ity or feeling. He is so small a part that he 
feels no shame for the sins of the whole. 
'* Multitudes never blush." With Sterne, 
in Tristram Shandy, I have the greatest 
veneration in the world for that gentleman, 
who, in distrust of his own discretion, sat 
down and composed, at his leisure, fit 
forms of swearing suitable for all cases. Forms of 
from the lowest to the highest provoca- a/uZlf 
tions, which could possibly happen to him ; 
which forms being well considered by him, 
and such moreover as he could stand to, 
he kept them ever by him on the chim- 
ney-piece, within his reach, ready for use. 
Think of it ! an imprecation ever ready for 
every annoyance of my detestable city life ! 
Capital idea ! But as big a book it would a capital 
be as the Hermit of Bellyfulle's encyclo- 
pedia of cookery, — who died, I believe, 
after completing only a part of it, — a few 
volumes only. Cities ! How to account 
for them ! Charon, I think it was (in Lu- 
cian), who, surveying the earth one day 
(from above) with Mercury — his one only 
day of furlough under the bright sun — 



72 



A Club of One 



Hiding- 
places. 



Contrast of 
fields and 
forests. 



Trees and 
leaves. 



An October 
day ijt Ohio. 



called them "hiding-places." A shrewd 
man sees a kettle boil, and others adapt the 
thing called steam to locomotive purposes ; 
and forthwith, one says, every fool goes 
everywhere for what he calls his holidays, 
but which, indeed, are his most laborious 
days. Ultimately he sticks himself down in 
a place where he finds the greatest number 
of people like himself. Hence these huge 
cities ! Ah, the contrast of fields and for- 
ests ! Trees ! Think of them ! In the 
United States thirty-six varieties of oak, 
thirty-four of pine, nine of fir, five of spruce, 
four of hemlock, two of persimmon, twelve 
of ash, eighteen of willow, nine of poplar, 
and I don't know how many of the beauti- 
ful beech. I once counted over thirty dif- 
ferent varieties of trees in the space of one 
acre. And the leaves ! — their number, 
their individuality, their variety of shape 
and tint, the acres of space that those of 
one great tree would cover if spread out 
and laid together. In the autumn to watch 
them fall — how slowly ! how rapidly ! — 
yet they say nobody ever saw one of them 
let go ! Homer's comparison to the lives 
of men — how fine! Better than Lucian's 
to the bubbles. I remember very well one 
October day in Ohio. It was long ago — 



A Chib of One 75 

" In life's morning march, when my bosom 
was young." (I like to quote from that 
poem of Campbell's, — it is incomparable 
of its kind.) A delightful tramp ! Elder- 
berries. (The great Boerhaave held the 
elder in such pleasant reverence for the 
multitude of its virtues, that he is said to 
have taken off his hat whenever he passed 
it.) Grapes. Haws. Papaws. (Nature's Nature's 
custard.) Spicewood. Sassafras. Hickory "" '^'^ ' 
nuts. Nearly a primeval forest. Vines 
reminding one of Brazilian creepers. Trees 
that were respectable saplings when Colum- 
bus landed. The dead roots of an iron- 
wood — so like a monster as to startle. 
Behemoth I thought of. (" He moveth his Behemoth. 
tail like a cedar.") Thistle-down. Diffused 
like small vices. Every seed hath wings. 
Here and there a jay, or a woodpecker. 
Grape vines, fantastically running over the 
tops of tall bushes, — grouping deformi- 
ties, any one of which, if an artist drew 
it, would be called an exaggeration, worse 
than anything of Dore's. Trees, swaying 
and bowing to one another, like stilted stated 
clowns in Nature's afterpiece of the Sea- ^ '^'"" 
sons. Trees incorporated, — sycamore and 
elm, maple and hickory, — modifying and 
partaking each other's nature ; resembling 



y4 ^ Club of One 

so much as to appear one tree. A jolly 
gray squirrel, — hopping from limb to 
limb, like a robin ; swinging like an ori- 
ole ; flying along the limb like a weaver's 
A scudding shuttle ; scared away, at length, by a scud- 

cloud of f. . . ,-. , 

pigeojis. dmg cloud 01 pigeons, just brushmg the 
tallest tree-tops, as if kissing an annual 
farewell. Clover. Sorrel. Pennyroyal. A 
drink of cider from a bit of broken crock- 
ery. (" Does he not drink more sweetly 
that takes his beverage in an earthen ves- 
sel than he that looks and searches into 
his golden chalices for fear of poison, and 
sleeps in armor, and trusts nobody, and 
does not trust God for his safety } ") 
"■ All is fair — all glad, — from grass to 
Notavieia7i- sun ! " Not a " mclaucholy " day. Keats's 
ciocj ay. p^gj^ Qj^ Autumn comes to mind; and 
Crabbe's. *' Welcome pure thoughts, wel- 
come, ye silent groves ; these guests, these 
courts, my soul most dearly loves." In- 
dian summer. Balzac's comparison to 
ripe womanhood. The significant worn 
walk round the mean man's field ; its 
crooked outline impressively striking. All 
in all, a white day. Memory of it supplies 
these notes. They might be expanded 
into an essay. The country, the country ! 
Though the man who would truly relish 



A Club of One y^ 

and enjoy it (thought Dodsley in a letter to to relish 
Spence) must be previously furnished with 7he c^ntry. 
a large and various stock of ideas, which 
he must be capable of turning over in his 
own mind, of comparing, varying, and con- 
templating upon with pleasure ; he must 
so thoroughly have seen the world as to 
cure him of being over fond of it ; and he 
must have so much good sense and virtue 
in his own heart as to prevent him from 
being disgusted with his own reflections, 
or uneasy in his own company. Alas ! — 

The wits, most of them, have had their 
joke about the children. Sydney Smith, Sydney 

. . . Sinitlis joke 

writmg to Countess Grey oi a new grand- about the 

1-11 T IT-' -1 ITT children. 

child, says, '' 1 am glad it is a girl ; all lit- 
tle boys ought to be put to death." Lamb, LamVs. 
after being plagued all the morning by 
noisy children, proposed a toast to ^'the 
memory of the m - m - much - abused and 
m-m-much calumniated good King Herod." 
A foolish woman once asked Barnes (editor Barnes\ 
of the London Times) whether he were 
fond of children, and received the answer, 
" Yes, ma'am ; boiled." Coleridge, in his 
fondness for them, called them '' King- Kingdom- 
dom-of-Heavenites." Appropriate, I think, LV""^^'" 
after spending a few minutes with a pretty 



y6 A Club of One 

little girl who brought me some fruit this 
morning. She was a lovely creature. In 
a plain dress of dark cloth ; roses in her 
cheeks ; sunshine in her hair ; innocence in 
her eyes ; in her face the light of heaven. 
FatherRyan Father Ryau, a Catholic priest, once told 

and the little , . . , , , . 

chUd. me how, while he was preachmg, on a great 

occasion, a child he was fond of came sud- 
denly inside the railing, and pulling at his 
robe, and looking up sweetly into his face, 
said, ** Father Ryan, are you going to kith 
me } " At which, of course, many in the 
great audience laughed. But when he 
took the darling up in his arms, and said, 
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven," and 
descanted upon the innocency and purity 
of childhood, there was not a dry eye in 
the church, and sobs not a few were dis- 
tinctly heard in every part of the as- 
sembly. There is no doubt that children 

jeanPatd. of a Certain depth, as Jean Paul says, like 
buildings of a certain size, give echoes. 
Responses, we should call them, heard 
out of Paradise , repeated in the children. 

Thackeray. " I lovc," says Thackcray, "to see the kind 
eyes of women fondly watching children 
as they gambol about; a female face, be 
it ever so plain, when occupied in regarding 
children, becomes celestial almost, and a 



A Club of One yy 

man can hardly fail to be good and happy- 
while he is looking on such sights. * Ah, 
sir ! ' says an enormous man, whom you 
would not accuse of sentiment, 'I have a Acoupko/ 
couple of those things at home ; ' and he athom"'^^ 
stops and heaves a great big sigh and swal- 
lows down a half tumbler of cold something 
and water. We know what the honest fel- 
low means well enough. He is saying to 
himself, ' God bless my girls and their 
mother ! ' " " It is very easy," says Holmes, 
in his remarkable Elsie Venner, "to criti- 
cise other people's modes of dealing with other peo- 
their children. Outside observers see re- dteti. ' 
suits ; parents see processes. They notice 
the trivial movements and accents which 
betray the blood of this or that ancestor ; 
they can detect the irrepressible move- 
ment of hereditary impulse in looks and 
acts which mean nothing to the common 
observer. To be a parent is almost to be to be a par- 
a fatalist. This boy sits with legs crossed, Z'/atJist. 
just as his uncle used to whom he never 
saw ; his grandfathers both died before 
he was born, but he has the movement of 
the eyebrows which we remember in one 
of them, and the gusty temper of the 
other." No wonder, said one who was 
acquainted with Lady Byron as Miss Mil- 



y8 A Club of One 

Lord and bankc, that the marriage of Lord Byron 

Lady Byron. (. , , 

was never one of reasonable promise. 
The bridegroom and the bride were ill- 
assorted. They were two only children, 
and two spoilt children. The best way of 
Platoon training the young, that loftiest teacher of 

training the . . • i • • i r 

young. the ancients, Plato, said, is to train yourseli 
at the same time ; not to admonish them, 
but to be always carrying out your own 
principles in practice. It was the conclu- 
sion of Professor Venable, one of the most 
accomplished of his profession, that many 

A mistake tcachcrs of morality destroy the good effect 

of teachers ^ . , . . in 

of morality, of judicious couuscl by too much talk, as a 
chemical precipitate is redissolved in an 
excess of the precipitating agent. " Train 
up a child in the way he should go : and 
when he is old he will not depart from it." 
Soidheyon "Generally speaking," thought Southey, 
chiidj^en!^ " it will be found so ; but is there any other 
rule to which there are so many excep- 
tions .<* Ask the serious Christian, as he 
calls himself, or the professor (another and 
more fitting appellative which the Chris- 
tian Pharisees have chosen for themselves), 
ask him whether he has found it hold good. 
Whether his sons, when they attained to 
years of discretion (which are the most in- 
discreet years in the course of human life). 



A Club of One 79 

have profited as he expected by the long 
extemporaneous prayers to which they Hs- 
tened night and morning, the sad Sabbaths sadSab^ 
which they were compelled to observe, and 
the soporific sermons which closed the do- 
mestic religiosities of those melancholy 
days. Ask them if this discipline has pre- 
vented them from running headlong into 
the follies and vices of the age, — from be- 
ing bird-limed by dissipation, — or caught 
in the spider's web of sophistry and unbe- 
lief. ^ It is no doubt a true observation/ 
says Bishop Patrick, 'that the x^2,^j ^2:^ Howtomake 

^ ^ • ^ r ^ • ininds grow 

to make the minds 01 youth grow awry is azvry. 

to lace them too hard, by denying them 

their just freedom.' Ask the old faithful 

servant of Mammon, whom Mammon has 

rewarded to his heart's desire, and in whom 

the acquisition of riches has only increased 

his eagerness for acquiring more, — ask 

him whether he has succeeded in training 

up his heir to the same service. He will 

tell you that the young man is to be found Experience 

, , . . 1 of the ser- 

upon race grounds, and m gaming-houses, van^o/ 
that he is taking his swing of extravagance 
and excess, and is on the high road to 
ruin. Ask the wealthy Quaker [Southey 
hated the Quakers], the pillar of the meet- 
ing — most orthodox in heterodoxy, — who 



8o A Cluh of One 

never wore a garment of forbidden cut or 
color, never bent his body in salutation, or 
his knees in prayer, — never uttered the 
heathen name of a day or month, nor ever 
addressed himself to any person without 
religiously speaking illegitimate English, 
co7ivertedby — ask him how it has happened that the 
tailor has converted his sons. He will fold 
his hands, and twirl his thumbs mourn- 
fully in silence. It has not been for want 
of training them in the way wherein it was 
his wish that they should go. You are 
about, sir, to send your son to a famous 
school. He may come from it an accom- 
plished scholar to the utmost extent that 
school education can make him so ; he may 
be the better both for its discipline and its 
want of discipline ; it may serve him excel- 
Doubtfni lently well as a preparatory school for the 
7chooiedu- world into which he is about to enter. 
But also he may come away an empty cox- 
comb or a hardened brute — a spendthrift 
— a profligate — a blackguard or a sot. 
To put a boy in the way he should go is 
like sending out a ship well found, well 
manned and stored, and with a careful cap- 
tain ; but there are rocks and shallows in 
her course, winds and currents to be en- 
countered, and all the contingencies and 



cation. 



a7td his nu- 
merous 
progeny. 



A Club of One 8i 

perils of the sea." As to the training 
and conduct of the children of my own 
body, I choose to speak in the language of 
John Buncle, who was seven times a hus- john Buncie 
band, and, one would infer, the father of a 
very numerous progeny. *' As I mention," 
he says, '' nothing of any children by so 
many wives, some readers may perhaps 
wonder at this ; and therefore, to give a 
general answer, once for all, I think it suf- 
ficient to observe, that I had a great many, 
to carry on the succession ; but as they 
never were concerned in any extraordi- 
nary affairs, nor ever did any remarkable 
things, that I heard of, only rise and break- 
fast, read and saunter, drink and eat, it 
would not be fair, in my opinion, to 
trouble any one with their history." 

Is life worth living .? Pecuniarily, hard- /f/i/*^wd?r^A 
ly, one would think, to very many, after 
reading Dr. Farr's interesting chapter on 
the pecuniary value of life. A certain 
amount of expense, he says, has to be in- 
curred in any class before a child can attain 
such an age and such strength that it can 
earn its own livelihood. It is very difficult 
to estimate what the expenses of even a 
careful man who passes through the ordi- 



82 



A Cluh of One 



ary value of 
life. 



nary university career must have been be- 
fore he is able to earn anything for himself. 
Among the lower ranks the problem is 
simpler, though the facts and the general 
course of events have, making due allow- 
ance for difference in station, a considera- 
Thepecuni- blc similarity. The value, says the doctor, 
of any class of lives is determined by valu- 
ing first at birth, or at any age, the cost 
of future maintenance ; and then the value 
of the future earnings. Thus proceeding, 
I found the value of a Norfolk agricultural 
laborer to be £2aJq at the age of twenty- 
five ; the child is by this method worth 
only £^ at birth ; £^6 at the age of five ; 
£,\\J at the age of ten ; the youth £,\(^2 
at the age of fifteen ; the young man ;£234 
at the age of twenty ; the man £2/^6 at 
the age of twenty-five ; £,2a,\ at the age of 
thirty, when the value goes on declining to 
;£i36 at the age of fifty -five ; and only one 
pound at the age of seventy ; the cost of 
maintenance afterwards exceeding the earn- 
ings, the value becomes negative ; at eighty 
the value of the cost of maintenance ex- 
ceeds the value of the earnings by ^£41. 



A t seventy 
the vahie 
becomes 
7iegative. 



The stupid The Stupid doctors, little as they know, 

doctors. . , , . ' ^ 

It must be admitted, have made some ad- 



A Cluh of One 8^ 

vance since Hippocrates. One of the court 
physicians, in the reign of Charles II., in- 
vented an instrument to cleanse the stom- 
ach and wrote a pamphlet on it ; and ridic- 
ulous as a stomach scrubbing-brush may a stomach 
appear, it afterward got a place among sur- trzU"'^' 
gical instruments, and received a Latin 
name, meaning cleanser of the stomach ; 
but the moderns not having stomach for it 
have transferred it to the wine-merchant, 
who more appropriately applies it to the 
scouring of the interior of bottles. Heister 
gives a minute description of it. Many of 
the remedies recommended and recorded 
by the great and good Sir Thomas Browne 
are not a bit less ridiculous or absurd than 
those mentioned in the compilation follow- 
ing. There was a special water procured 
by distillation from a peck of garden shell 
snails and a quart of earth, worms, besides 
other things ; this was prescribed, not for Forcon- 
consumption alone, but for dropsy and all 
obstructions. For broken bones, bones 
out of joint, or any grief in the bones or 
sinews, oil of swallows was pronounced 
exceedingly sovereign, and this was to be 
procured by pounding twenty live swallows 
in a mortar with about as many different 
herbs ! A mole, male or female according 



84 A Club of One 

to the sex of the patient, was to be dried 
in an oven whole as taken out of the earth, 
and administered in powder for the epi- 
lepsy. A gray eel, with a white belly, was 
to be inclosed in an earthen pot, and bur- 
ied alive in a dung-hill, and at the end of a 

Toheiphear- fortnight its oil might be collected to "help 
hearing." A mixture of rose leaves and 
pigeon's dung quilted in a bag, and laid hot 
upon the parts affected, was thought to 

For the help a stitch in the side ; and for the quinsy, 
''give the party to drmk, says one or the 
old books, " the herb mouse-ear, steeped in 
ale or beer ; and look when you see a swine 
rub himself, and there upon the same place 
rub a slick stone, and then with it slick all 

To make the thc swclllng, and it will cure it." To make 
hair grow on a bald part of the head, gar- 
den snails were to be plucked out of their 
houses, and pounded with horse leeches, 
bees, wasps, and salt, an equal quantity of 
each ; and the baldness was to be anointed 
with a moisture from this mixture after it 
had been buried eight days in a hotbed. 

Toremove For the rcmoval and extirpation of super- 
fluous hairs, a depilatory was to be made by 
drowning in a pint of wine as many green 
frogs as it would cover (about twenty was 
the number), setting the pot forty days in 



A Club of One 8^ 

the sun, and then straining it for use. A 
water specially good against gravel or For dropsy. 
dropsy might be distilled from the dried 
and pulverized blood of a black buck or he- 
goat, three or four years old. The animal 
was to be kept by himself, in the summer- 
time when the sun was in Leo, and dieted 
for three weeks upon certain herbs given 
in prescribed order, and to drink nothing 
but red wine, if you would have the best 
preparation, though some persons allowed 
him his fill of water every third day. But 
there was a water of man's blood, which water of 

^-. T^i- 1 ^1 > 1 • matCs blood. 

m Queen Elizabeth s days was a new m- 
vention, " whereof some princes had very 
great estimation, and used it for to remain 
thereby in their force, and, as they thought, 
to live long." A strong man was to be 
chosen, in his flourishing youth, and of 
twenty-five years, and somewhat choleric 
by nature. He was to be well dieted for 
one month with light and healthy meats, 
all kinds of spices, good strong wine, and, 
moreover, "kept with mirth;" at the Tobekept 

. . with mirth. 

month s end, vems m both arms were 
opened, and as much blood let out as he 
could "tolerate and abide." One handful 
of salt was added to six pounds of this 
blood, and this was seven times distilled, 



86 A Club of One 

pouring the water upon the residuum after 

every distillation, till the last. This was 

An mince at to bc taken three or four times a year, an 

a time. 

ounce at a time. 



Diseased sensibility is one of my worst 
maladies. I suffer from it, at times, as no 
mortal could know. It takes every form of 
mental misery. Now I am down to a point 
so low that the machinery of thinking all 
stops ; again I just touch insanity itself, 
where the mental machinery is all ready 
to fly to pieces. Noises, scarcely heard by 
another, pain me to the limit of distress. 
In every nerve and fibre I tremble in terror, 
His scared aud my scared faculties lose all power of 
losTaupow- resistance. I envy, from my soul, the Lapp 
a?ice. who drinks tobacco oil as a stomachic, and 

has a skin as insensible as his stomach. In 
Lapland, as Montesquieu puts it, " you must 
flay a man to make him feel." I can well 
understand the sensitiveness of Lord By- 
ron, who, even in dying, shrunk away when 
those about him put their hands near his 
foot, as if fearing that they should uncover 
it. In his last sickness it was thought 
right to apply blisters to the soles of his 
feet. When on the point of putting them 
on, the poet asked the attendant whether it 



Byron wheti 
dying. 



A Club of One 8y 

would answer the purpose to apply both on TkepoeVs 
the same leg. Guessing immediately the '''^^'''"''^ 
motive that led him to ask this question, the 
nurse told him that he would place them 
above the knees. '' Do so," was the reply. 
I once knew a man — eminent in his pro- 
fession — who carried an unsightly birth- 
mark in his face. I never met him without 
perceiving a slight shock of apprehension, 
lest I might observe too closely his misfor- 
tune. Dr. Franklin mentions a gentleman 
who, having one very handsome and one 
shriveled l^g, was wont to test the dispo- ^ ,,,,,,,,, 
sition of a new acquaintance by observing tfj!^"'"' 
whether he or she looked first or most at the 
best or worst leg. Erskine was intensely 
sensitive, and his acute sensibility being in- 
dependent of any and every other malady, 
as my sensitiveness is not (to my ever- 
lasting distress), it helped him as an advo- 
cate and orator. Once, we are told, he was 
confused and put out in an impassioned 
address to a jury by a yawning attorney, 
placed by malice prepense exactly in his line Maiice^re- 
of view under the jury-box. Arrested in """"■ 
his own despite by the absent or desponding 
look of Garrow, who was with him in the 
cause, he whispered," Who do you think can 
get on with that wet blanket of a face of 



ness. 



88 A Club of One 

Erskine's yours bcforc him ? " His maiden effort in 

effort. the House of Commons was marred by the 

real or affected indifference of Pitt, who, 
after listening a few minutes, and taking a 
note or two as if intending to reply, dashed 
pen and paper upon the floor with a con- 
temptuous smile. Erskine could not re- 
cover from this expression of disdain ; "■ his 
voice faltered, he struggled through the 
remainder of his speech, and sank into his 
seat dispirited and shorn of his fame." On 

Pitt's bitter- another occasion, Pitt rose after Erskine 
and began : " I rise to reply to the right 
honorable gentleman (Fox) who spoke 
last but one. As for the honorable and 
learned gentleman who spoke last, he did 
no more than regularly repeat what fell 
from the gentleman who preceded him, and 
as regularly weakened what he repeated." 
No man ever existed, I believe, with more 
acute and unavoidable antipathies than my- 

A story told sclf. I Can wcll bclieve the story told by 
Charles Lamb, of two persons meeting (who 
never saw each other before in their lives) 
and instantly fighting. Blank, said Cole- 
ridge, " is one of those men who go far to 
shake my faith in a future state of exist- 
ence ; I mean on account of the difficulty of 
knowing where to place him. I could not 



by Lamb. 



A Club of One 8g 

bear to roast him ; he is not so bad as all Not bad 
that comes to : but then, on the other hand, TfrocLted. 
to have to sit down with such a fellow in 
the very lowest pot-house of heaven is ut- 
terly inconsistent with the belief of that 
place being a place of happiness for me.'* 
There are men who bully me with their 
immense, swaggering, animal spirits ; and 
I can imagine the distress of the sensitive 
Goldsmith in the presence of the high-fed. Goldsmith 
gigantic, aggressive Foote. That element "'^ 
of Macaulay's character, which Palmerston 
called " cock-sureness," must have had 
much the same effect upon shrinking and 
self-distrusting natures brought in contact 
with it. Thoms, the founder and long the 
editor of Notes and Queries, met Lord 
Macaulay in the House of Lords one day. Anecdote of 
and remarked that he could not quite un- '^^'^'' '"-*'■ 
derstand why Pope satirized Dryden in the 
Dunciad. Macaulay replied that Thoms 
must be mistaken, and before an audience 
of a score of peers spoke with his usual en- 
ergy and eloquence in support of his view 
that Pope could not and would not have 
lampooned Dryden. All this time Thoms 
had a copy of the Dunciad in his pocket 
with a leaf turned down at the passage to 
which he had referred, but he was too well 



90 



A Club of One 



Fuddled 
•with animal 
spirits. 



Courtesy a 
commodity. 



Burns a 
natural 
gentletnan. 



bred to produce the volume. Sydney 
Smith said of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 
'' He is fuddled with animal spirits, giddy 
with constitutional joy." Such a man to 
come into the presence of another all quiv- 
ering from the effects of every malady 
known under the sun is a calamity. One 
objection that I have to my new doctor is 
that he has too high health. The mercury 
at zero, he comes steaming in like a loco- 
motive. His features blaze like a constel- 
lation. And he is a little bit unceremoni- 
ous, too, at times. Courtesy we expect, and 
have a right to, in a fair degree ; in the 
doctor it is a commodity — we pay for it. 
To the point of obeisance or obsequious- 
ness, however, it is as offensive as brusque- 
ness or boorishness. Mrs. Basil Montagu 
met Burns, and pronounced him ''the most 
royally courteous of mankind." In his 
sense of manhood he never forgot the man. 
In that portrait of Nasmyth's he carries 
the brow and mien of a natural gentleman. 
Ah, a gentleman ! A rarer thing, thought 
Thackeray, than some of us think for. 
Which of us can point out many such in his 
circle, — men whose aims are generous, 
whose truth is constant and elevated ; who 
can look the world honestly in the face, with 



A Club of One gi 

an equal manly sympathy for the great and Great and 
the small ? We all know a hundred whose 7ohim. ' 
coats are well made, and a score who have 
excellent manners ; but of gentlemen how 
many ? Let us take a little scrap of paper 
and each make out his list An amusing 
illustration of obeisance is in that most gro- 
tesque figure in Serjeant Ballantine's book 
of Experiences, of a decently dressed, quiet- 
looking man who used to present himself a grotesque 
after dinner to the judges and counsel on 
the last day of the Old Bailey sessions. 
Upon his appearance he was always pre- 
sented with a glass of wine, and this he 
drank to the health of his patrons, express- 
ing '* with becoming modesty his gratitude 
for past favors and his hopes for favors to 
come." It was Calcraft, the hangman ! In 
contrast with that is the royal language 
of Byron, in one of his Dedications. After 
the words '' Scott alone," Byron inserted, 
in a parenthesis, — " He will excuse the 
Mr. — we do not say Mr. Caesar." Good- Good-breed- 
breedmg is not wholly acquired ; to some o/God. 
extent, like genius, it is the gift of God. 
When two persons of exceptional good- 
breeding (says Holmes) meet in the midst 
of the common multitude, they seek each 
other's company at once by the natural law 



92 



A Club of One 



, Elective 
affinities. 



Lojds XIV. 
and Lord 
Stair. 



of elective affinities. It is wonderful how 
men and women know their peers. If two 
strange queens, sole survivors of two ship- 
wrecked vessels, were cast, half-naked, on a 
rock together, each would at once address 
the other as " Our Royal Sister." Louis 
XIV. was told that Lord Stair was one 
of the best-bred men in Europe. '' I shall 
soon put him to the test," said the king ; 
and asking Lord Stair to take an airing 
with him, as soon as the door of the coach 
was opened, he bade him pass and get in. 
The other bowed and obeyed. The king 
said, "The world is in the right, in the 
character it gives — another person would 
have troubled me with ceremony." 



Politeness of 
Louis XIV. 



It has been said that never was man so 
polite as Louis XIV. He never passed a 
woman, however lowly her position, even 
though she were one of the menials of his 
palace, without raising his hat, and the 
whole time he conversed with a lady he 
remained uncovered. And yet never was 
man more selfish and indifferent to the 
convenience of both man and woman ; 
no matter what might be the state of the 
weather, no matter how delicate might be 
their health, he insisted upon all the la- 



A Club of One g^ 

dies of the court attending him in his long selfishness 

, , , . . , incarnate, 

drives or promenades, sometimes continued 
through several hours, beneath a burning 
sun or in frost and snow. Sometimes they 
fell fainting from their horses with illness, 
or fatigue, but such incidents never moved 
him. " Tell Murray," said Sydney Smith 
to Jeffrey, "that I was much struck with 
the politeness of Miss Markham the day 
after he went. In carving a partridge, I 
splashed her with gravy from head to foot ; 
and though I saw three distinct brown rills 
of animal juice trickling down her cheek, 
she had the complaisance to swear that not 
a drop had reached her ! " I have heard Mr. 
Fraser say (says Wraxall, in his Historical 
Memoirs), who was, during many years, 
under-secretary of state, that in 1760, a few 
months before the king died, having occa- 
sion to present a paper to him for his sig- 
nature, at Kensington, George the Second George 11. 
took the pen in his hand ; and having, as 
he conceived, affixed his name to it, re- 
turned it to Fraser. But so defective was 
his vision, that he had neither dipped his 
pen in the ink, nor did he perceive that of 
course he had only drawn it over the paper, 
without making any impression. Fraser, Eraser's 

/. , 1 . , 1 . T •^^ delicacy. 

aware of the king s blindness, yet unwill- 



9^ A Cluh of One 

ing to let his majesty observe that he dis- 
covered it, said, " Sir, I have given you so 
bad a pen, that it will not write. Allow me 
to present you a better for the purpose." 
Then dipping it himself in the ink, he re- 
turned it to the king, who, without making 
any remark, instantly signed the paper. It 
is said that towards a chancellor whom Sir 

sugden and Edward Sugdcu liked he could be as sweet 
o etiiam. ^^ summcr. Lord Cottenham one day fell 
asleep on the bench. Sir Edward imme- 
diately paused. The cessation of sound 
had the customary effect of awakening the 
chancellor. ''Why don't you go on. Sir Ed- 
ward .? " ''I thought your lordship might 
be looking over your notes," was the bland 
response. This, of course, pleased the chan- 
cellor, who was liable to doze, and hated 

Greeley. auybody noticiug it. Horace Greeley said 
he had never been beaten in politeness but 
once. That happened, he said, many years 
before. Early one morning he left Bragg's 
Hotel, at Utica, in the stage-coach, west- 
ward bound. There was but one passenger 
besides himself, — a gentleman of very pre- 
possessing appearance, with whom he soon 
fell into conversation. After a while the 
stranger slowly and, as it were, mechani- 
cally drew a cigar-case from his pocket, and, 



A Club of One g^ 

opening it, tendered it to Mr. Greeley, who 
declined the kind offer. The conversation Declines a 
was resumed ; and presently the stranger, "^''^' 
extracting a cigar from the case, placed it 
in his mouth, and returned the case to his 
pocket. Another interval of talk ensued, 
when the stranger abruptly but deferen- 
tially remarked to Mr. Greeley, '' I hope, 
sir, you have no objection to a cigar.'*" 
" None in the world, sir," replied Mr. 
Greeley, ''when it is not alight." ''Oh," 
said his companion, " I had not the most 
remote thought of lighting it." There- Conquered 
upon Mr. Greeley felt that he had been "'^'"^^'^"' 
conquered in politeness. 

As to compliments, I employ myself rec- 
ollecting a few that are remarkable in lit- 
erature. It was told of Lord Ashbrook, 
who never touched a feather during an 
entire* day's shooting at Holkham, that the 
keeper, by way of consolation, remarked 
that he had seen people shoot worse than 
his lordship. " How can that be when I 
have missed bird after bird .^ " "Ay, but An amusing 

111- • 1 t I »> A r compliment. 

your lordship misses them so clean ! Af- 
ter his overthrow, Hannibal took refuge 
at the court of Prusias, King of Bithynia. 
There Scipio came on an embassy. The 



g6 A Club of One 

scipioand two great rivals met, and in conversation 
Hannibal ^^.^.^ ^^^^^ Hannibal whom he considered 

the greatest commander. "Alexander," was 
the reply. " And who next ? " '' Pyrrhus." 
" And who after him ? " " Myself." '' And 
what would you have said if you had beaten 
me at Zena } " " In that case I should have 
put myself before Alexander and Pyrrhus 
and all other generals." Mademoiselle Ra- 
Racheiand chcl was vcry auxious to have her portrait 
Ingres. ^akcu by Ingres, and made an appointment 
with him at his studio to talk the mat- 
ter over. In the course of conversation 
he remarked that in order to do justice to 
his model he should require at least fifty 
sittings of from two to three hours each. 
'' How long will it be before the portrait is 
completed t " she inquired. '' Four or five 
years," was the painter's reply. *' Misery ! " 
exclaimed Rachel ; " then I must abandon 
the idea, for I may be dead and buried be- 
fore you have immortalized me." "Ma- 
demoiselle," answered Ingres, with a smile, 
" I have no such pretension ; your own 
genius has already saved me the trouble." 
One of Allen, one of Leigh Hunt's schoolfellows, 
schSoi- was so handsome, that running one day 
^ ^^' against a barrow-woman in the street, and 
turning round to appease her in the midst 



A Club of One gy 

of her abuse, she said, ** Where are you 
driving to, you great hulking, good-for- 
nothing, beautiful fellow, God bless you ! " 
Voltaire, being on a visit to a very lovely voitaire. 
woman, said to her, " Your rivals are the 
curious works of art ; you are the most com- 
plete work of nature." Dr. Johnson paid a 
fine compliment to the wife of Dr. Beattie, 
when he wrote to Boswell, '' Of Dr. Beattie Johnson to 

, Boswell- 

I should have thought much, but that his 
lady puts him out of my head ; she is a very 
lovely woman." Colley Gibber alluded to coiiey 
the Duchess of Marlborough as possessing 
something that distinguished her above all 
the women of her time, — a distinction 
which she received not from earthly sover- 
eigns, but *' from the Author of Nature ; " 
that of being " a great-grandmother with- Duchess 

1 • > > T-» 1 ^/ Marl- 

out gray hairs. But the most extravagant borough. 
compliment — the most magnificent dis- 
play of gallantry — is recorded by Madame 
de Genlis, in her Memoirs. Madame de 
Blot, then very young, one day said in the 
presence of the Prince of Gonti, that she 
wished to have the portrait of her canary 
in a ring. The prince offered to give her 
the portrait and the ring, which Madame Madame de 
de Blot accepted, on condition that the ring 
should be mounted in the simplest manner, 



98 A Club of One 

The ring, and Dot sct with stones. The ring was, in 
fact, only a hoop of gold, but instead of a 
glass to cover the portrait, a large dia- 
mond had been used, which was ground as 
thin as glass. Madame de Blot discovered 
this piece of prodigality, and returned the 
diamond ; upon which the Prince of Conti 
caused the diamond to be ground into pow- 
der, and used it to dry the ink of the letter 

The Prince's hc wrotc on thc subject to Madame de 

gallantry. ^ \ ^ x 

Blot. And so I run on in a rambling way, 
dwelling on pleasant things in my library, 
as a resource and remedy for my desperate 
malady. But I cannot close my record of 
the day without referring to an incident 
pleasanter than any I have cited to a man 
in my lone, lorn, miserable condition — 
mentioned by Dr. Johnson. " I knew, " 
A verypret- Said the doctor, "■ a very pretty instance of 

ty instance. t i • i r ^ ^ 

a little girl, of whom her father was very 
fond, who once when he was in a melan- 
choly fit, and had gone to bed, persuaded 
him to rise in good humor by saying, ' My 
dear papa, please to get up, and let me 
help you on with your clothes, that I may 
learn to do it when you are an old man.' " 
Ah ! solar systems for such a child ! 

Lord Chancellor Brougham was once 



A Club of One gg 

asked to define a lawyer. '* A lawyer," he Brougham's 
said, '' is a learned gentleman who rescues ""a lawyer. ^ 
your estate from your enemies and keeps 
it himself." My observation and experi- 
ence, too, prove to me the truthfulness of 
the definition. My agent came to me yes- 
terday to say that the claim left in the 
hands of a lawyer in Illinois for collection 
is lost ! — the rascal having pocketed the 
amount, in addition to moneys from time 
to time advanced to him as fees. The vil- 
lainy is a surprise and a great vexation, Ammpuas- 

_ . , . , - aiit surprise. 

for the reason that the rascal was highly 
recommended to me for probity and honor. 
How many comforts that thousand dollars 
or so would have bought me ! How many 
physician's visits and apothecary's bills it 
would have paid ! The debtor, it appears, 
was an honest man ; the incorruptible at- 
torney employed to hunt him down turns The lawyer 

\ \ y • r r^' 1 1 the thief. 

out to be the thief. Time was when such 
villainy might have been punished. Not 
now. The profession stand together for 
mutual protection. Now and then an ef- 
fort is made to disbar an attorney for crim- 
inal practices, and as often it fails. Deal- 
ing so habitually in tricks and perjuries, 
the feeble promptings and declarations of 
truth are unfelt and unheeded. It was 



100 



A Club of One 



Caleb Bal- 
derstone. 



Peter- 
borough. 



Lying. 



i) 



Caleb Balderstone, I believe, the faithful 
seneschal at Wolf's Crag, that was always 
telling '* lees " for the " credit of the fam- 
ily." So the legal profession, quarrel as 
they may and do, amongst themselves, — • 
saying things to one another that go to 
the sources of character, — are neverthe- 
less always ready in words of excuse, de- 
fense, and approbation of one another. 
No matter how many estates they swallow 
up, they are innocency incarnate. The fly 
once into the parlor of the spider, it is the 
holy of holies. And the spiders are in 
league with one another. They inveigle 
to ruin. Peterborough is made to say by 
Landor, and very justly, " If an English 
lawyer is in danger of starving in a mar- 
ket-town or village, he invites another, and 
both thrive." The more the better. They 
inspire quarrels, and grow rich settling 
them. They suggest the indispensable 
testimony, and it is supplied. *' I want to 
go into a coal-mine," said Tom Sheridan, 
** in order to say I have been there." 
''Well, then, say so," replied the admirable 
father. Lying is so easy, and is so freely 
excused. "To lie for a friend," said Vol- 
taire, " is friendship's first duty. Lying is 
a vice only when it does harm ; it is a very 



A Club of One loi 

great virtue when it does good." There is 

a story of an Irishman on his trial for a story o/an 

felony who brought witnesses to speak for 

his character. They bore their testimony 

but too effectually, — the catalogue of the 

novel virtues which were attributed to him 

so perplexed his imagination that he cried 

out in court, ** My lord, if I had but known 

what I was, I would not have done it ! " 

The effect was just as surprising but very 

different in a case of Serjeant Ballantine's, a case of 

. . . Ballantifie's. 

reported m his mterestmg iixperiences. 
One of his first briefs was given to him by 
a rather shady attorney of the Jewish per- 
suasion : and being at that time without 
experience, young Ballantine yielded im- 
plicitly to his instructions. A young gen- 
tleman of the same faith, he says, was 
called as a witness. My client suggested 
a question. Blindly I put it, and was 
met by a direct negative. "What a lie ! " 
ejaculated my client, and dictated another 
question : the same result followed, and 
a similar ejaculation. By his further in- 
struction I put a third, the answer to 
which completely knocked us over. My Knocked 
client threw himself back. " Well," said 
he, *' he is a liar, he always was a liar, and 
always will be a liar." '' Why," remarked 



over. 



I02 



A Cluh of One 



Lying. 



Secrets of 
trade. 



FatJier 
Holt. 



I, "you seem to know all about him." 
" Of course I do," was the reply ; " he is 
my own son ! " Lying, says Leigh Hunt, 
is the commonest and most conventional 
of all the vices. It pervades, more or less, 
every class of the community, and is fan- 
cied to be so necessary to the carrying 
on of human affairs, that the practice is 
tacitly agreed upon ; nay, in other terms, 
openly avowed. In the monarch, it is 
kingcraft. In the statesman, expediency. 
In the churchman, mental reservation. In 
the lawyer, the interest of his client. In 
the merchant, manufacturer, and shop- 
keeper, secrets of trade. Says Taine, the 
best of men in Paris lie ten times a day ; 
the best of women twenty times a day ; 
the fashionable man a hundred times a 
day. No estimate has ever been made as 
to how many times a day a fashionable 
woman lies. Father Holt, the Jesuit, in 
Esmond, said to the boy, Henry, " that 
if to keep silence is not to lie, as it cer- 
tainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equiv- 
alent to a negation, and therefore a down- 
right No, in the interest of justice or your 
friend, and in reply to a question that may 
be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but 
on the contrary, praiseworthy ; and as law- 



A Club of One lo^ 

ful a way as the other of eluding a wrong- 
ful demand." The bad in human nature Thehadin 

1 1.1 '-T-1 human na- 

is generously accommodated. There are ture. 
good and bad notes in most voices, it is 
said — I know little about it myself. On 
one occasion, in Italy, a composer wrote 
his solos for one of his opera singers in a 
way to bring in all his worst notes very 
frequently ; but it was to get rid of him. 
Happy if the exposure of evil in the legal Professional 
profession resulted in the same manner. 
But hired sin becomes brazen, and virtue, 
as a consequence, shamefaced. It has 
been remarked as a noticeable fact that all 
contributions to the " conscience fund " 
are made anonymously. Can it be, it has 
been asked, that the man with a con- 
science is ashamed of it } Too tender a 
conscience has been remarked upon by 
Goethe as objectionable. He spoke of a 
boy who could not console himself after 
he had committed a trifling fault. " I was 
sorry to observe this," said Goethe, "for Goethe on 

• , 1 ^ , T . y . , a too tender 

It snows a too tender conscience, which conscience. 
values so highly its own moral self that it 
will excuse nothing in it." Such a con- 
science, he thought, makes unhealthy char- 
acters, if it is not balanced by great ac- 
tivity. Two consciences are suggested as 



I04 A Club of One- 

Two con- useful by Talleyrand. A distinguished 
^servedby ' persouagc remarked to him, " In the upper 
laiieyran . ^j^^j^^^j. ^^ \Q2LSt are to be found men pos- 
sessed of consciences." "Consciences," 
replied Talleyrand, " to be sure : I know 
many a peer who has got two." Society 
grows more and more lenient towards vil- 
statutesand lainy. Statutcs, more and more, are being 
penalties. fj-^j^g^^ j^y ^j^g Criminal lawyers for the 

benefit of criminals. Penalties, too, are 
being lessened and lessened. A breach of 
verbal contract is not any very great mat- 
ter in these days of universal enlighten- 
ment and much preaching ; but think of 
the penalty for it in the Zendavesta — 
liability of the next of kin to the ninth 
degree, and three hundred years in hell ! 
Thefirst The first lawyer, I believe, that we have 
lawyer. ^^^ account of in Holy Writ is Jonadab, 
who is described by the inspired writer as 
a ''very subtile man." He was consulted 
by Amnon in the sin against Tamar his 
sister. He was an arch pettifogger, I have 
no doubt. He gave the devilish advice and 
disappeared from the scene. Jonadab, the 
''subtile man : " a fair type, I should think, 
of too great a proportion of the lawyers 
^tstsanf — ^^^t i^ ^^^ order of approximate total 
jZdgfs. depravity to the hypocritical priests and 



A Cluh of One lo^ 

corrupt judges. A convenient, elastic con- 
science, subtilty, and what is vulgarly 
called " cheek," are indispensable. " I 
would rather have your cheek," said a gen- 
tleman to a petty attorney, '' than a license 
to steal." Any way to accomplish an ob- 
ject ; but the audacious or cunning way, 
being most professional, is preferred. In 
their covert practices they sometimes re- 
mind me of the blood-sucking bats of South Biood-suck- 
America, described by Wallace. The ex- "'^ ''^'' 
act manner in which the animal attacks is 
not positively known, as the sufferer never 
feels the wound. The motion of the wings 
fans the sleeper into a deeper slumber, and 
renders him insensible to the gentle abra- 
sion of the skin either by teeth or tongue. 
Thus ultimately forms a minute opening, 
the blood flowing from which is sucked or 
lapped up by the hovering vampire. '* Keep Advice o/ 
out of chancery, said old Krook, m 
Bleak House. " For," said he, " it 's being 
ground to bits in a slow mill ; it 's being 
roasted at a slow fire ; it 's being stung to 
death by single bees ; it 's being drowned 
by drops ; it 's going mad by grains." As 
to advocacy, I have long thought with 
Carlyle, that it is a strange trade. " Your 
intellect, your highest heavenly gift, hung 



io6 A Club of One 

up in the shop-window like a loaded pistol 
for sale ; will either blow out a pestilent 
scoundrel's brains, or the scoundrel's salu- 
tary sheriff's officer's (in a sense), as you 
please to choose for your guinea." Some- 
times, in a generous mood, I am re- 
Economy hi minded of Paddy's suggestion of economy 
in justice, and feel like commending it as a 
stroke of policy. It occurred in the case 
of an outlaw, who was a blacksmith, con- 
demned to transportation for life, but who 
excited powerful sympathy on the score 
of his professional merits. He lived in a 
hunting county where his aid was thought 
so valuable that an application was made 
to the judge in order that his sentence 
might be mitigated. "■ He is the only 
man, your honor," said the influential dep- 
utation, " who can shoe a horse for miles 
about us." *' Impossible, gentlemen," re- 
impiacabie pHcd the Rhadamauthus ; " an example 
thus."'"'"'''' must.be made." ''Very true," observed 
the applicants ; " but, you see, we have got 
only one blacksmith, whilst we have a 
number of attorneys. Could n't you take 
one of the attorneys } " Though com- 
mending the suggestion, I am happy to re- 
cord that I know at least one lawyer who 
is an honest man. His big brain is the 



A Club of One loy 

home of wisdom, and ** the Ten Command- 
ments are written on his countenance." 



Integrity, entireness, soundness to the integrity. 
core. I do like an honest man. He re- 
alizes the precept, in passing every day as 
the last, and in being neither violently ex- 
cited nor torpid, nor playing the hypo- 
crite. He stands a man, responsible to 
all men for all the manhood there is in 
him. He is known and read, and his life 
is in no sense a lie. He so lives with man 
" as considering that God sees him, and so 
speaks to God as if men heard him." *' I 
look upon the simple and childish virtues 
of veracity and honesty," says Emerson, veradty 
*'as the root of all that is sublime in char- '''' "-""^'y- 
acter. Speak as you think, be what you 
are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer 
to be owned as sound and solvent, and my 
word as good as my bond, and to be what 
cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or under- 
mined, to all the eclat in the universe." 
/"Society could not exist for a day without 

moral honesty) it is as the hair in the Moral hon- 
mortar which holds the elements together. '''^^' 
There must be integrity, if everything is 
not to be artificial and conventional. Gen- 
eral Thomas said that the prime essential 



io8 A Club of One 

You must in dealing with the Indians was to tell the 

tell the truth , n i 

iotiu^in- truth, to tell the truth always, and to keep 
a promise, because to the white man when 
you failed to keep a promise you could 
give an apology that might be compre- 
hended, but the Indian never understood 
if you did not keep your agreement. Va- 
lerius records that Fabius redeemed cer- 
tain captives by the promise of a sum of 
money ; which when the senate refused to 
confirm, he sold all the property he pos- 
sessed, and with the produce paid down 
the stipulated sum, caring less to be poor 
in lands than poor in honesty. Confucius 

A saying of Said, *' At first, my way with men was to 

Conjucius. , , . 

hear their words, and give them credit for 
their conduct. Now, my way is to hear 
their words, and look at their conduct." 
*' They that cry down moral honesty," said 
old John Selden, ** cry down that which is 
a great part of religion, my duty towards 
God, and my duty towards man. What 
care I to see a man run after a sermon, if 
he cozens and cheats as soon as he comes 
Religion home } " Religion were emptiness and 

without . , , . 

7twraihon- prctcnce Without moral honesty ; and only 
sentimentalists and illuminists in religion 
denounce it. When a preacher, of good 
sense, fairly upon his feet, inveighs against 



noticed. 



A Club of One 109 

morality, I set it down mathematically 
that he is either uncandid or mercenary, 
I have noticed that such (when not irre- whathehad 
sponsible from enthusiasm) almost invari- 
ably illustrated their discourses in a way 
unconsciously to denote their irrepressi- 
ble, constitutional thrift ; and threatened 
to resign their pastorates if their salaries 
were not promptly paid. It was apparent 
enough that they knew perfectly well that 
houses are not built by beginning at the 
roof ; yet they reasoned preposterously 
that characters could be built in that ab- 
surd manner. Balloons, that move with 
the air, are not structures to resist the 
tempests ; temples, that outlast the storm, 
have rock foundations. At the bottom of 
the edifice which is destined to stand, and 
to show no crack or flaw for ages, are 
great, invisible, well-dressed stones, per- 
fectly leveled, and perfectly laid in ce- 
ment. So at the foundation of the charac- 
ter of every honest man there are virtues 
and elements, cemented and established, 
that are destined to make it worthily ev- 
erlasting. They are invisible, and were 
not for a moment thought of as to be seen 
by the architect. The honest man feels 
himself continually searched by the eye of 



A t the foun- 
dation of 
every honest 
num. 



no 



A Club of One 



Substance 
and shadow. 



Conscietice 
and con- 
sciozisness. 



The Golden 
Ride. 



God, and the observation and estimate of 
the world are of secondary importance to 
him. He distinguishes between the real 
substance, character, and its shadow, repu- 
tation. He is careful about repeating the 
Lord's Prayer, as he cannot help regard- 
ing it as a test of himself, as well as an 
act of adoration to the Deity. Before 
pronouncing the words. Forgive us our 
debts, as we also have forgiven our debt- 
ors, he hesitates, and inquisition begins. 
Conscience dons the ermine, and con- 
sciousness testifies. Conceit of superex- 
cellence is not a natural result of such 
self-examination. The ideal seems further 
from attainment with every effort ; but ef- 
fort is encouraged to become habitual by 
increased sense of responsibility. An in- 
dividual, not responsible to party or sect, 
he has a conscience directly toward God. 
Doing his best to live virtuously and walk 
humbly, he confidently trusts the Creator 
to take care of the creature. With the 
highest standards of conduct practicable 
or attainable, he judges himself not less 
severely than others. The Golden Rule 
he believes to be particularly for self-ap- 
plication. His moral anchorages are fixed 
and habitual. There are things that un- 



A Club of One ni \ 

der no possible circumstances would he 
do. His principles are in such constant Principles 
use that they have the look of instincts. Z\ncts. 
His morals are so constantly applied that 
they have the appearance of habits. He 
has realized the precept of Plutarch, that 
habit soon makes right conduct easy. 
Habit, indeed, he has discovered to be 
omnipotent. *'A11 is habit," says Metas- 
tasio, — "even virtue itself." In brutes, 
even, he has seen the controlling effect of 
discipline. It is related that during the 
Franco-German war, after the slaughter at 
Vionville, a strange and touching spectacle a touching 
was presented. On the evening call being ^ ^^^^ 
sounded by the first regiment of Dragoons 
of the Guard, six hundred and two rider- 
less horses answered to the summons, — 
jaded, and in many cases maimed. The 
noble animals still retained their disci- 
plined habits. But deeper than discipline 
or habit — far down below either — the 
character of a thoroughly honest man takes 
root. Hawthorne said of his trusted as- 
sistant in the custom-house at Salem, that 
his intemtv was a law of nature with him integrity a 

^ -' _ law of na- 

rather than a choice or a principle. The t^^e. 
life of the thoroughly honest man, as I 
have said, is in no sense a lie. His acts 



112 



A Club of One 



A cts and 
professions. 



A luful hy- 
pocrisy. 



Conduct in 
extreviity. 



are better than his professions. He per- 
forms, if possible, his promises. In a pub- 
lic or fiduciary capacity he acts as if his re- 
sponsibilities were personal. He does not 
turn thief when elected to office. He does 
not sink his soul in a corporation. He 
knows no friend in court. He does not 
deliberately swallow up estates by manipu- 
lating weak judges and procuring straw- 
bail, and afterward mercifully call the at- 
tention of the Almighty to the sins and 
short-comings of the women and children 
and imbeciles he has swindled and ruined. 
He does not live and flourish at a great 
rate at others' expense. The dollar in his 
pocket is not his if he owes any man a dol- 
lar. Scrupulous in meeting his obliga- 
tions, he is careful about incurring them^ 
Patches on his clothing are of little mo- 
ment compared with blotches of discredit 
on his character. If by fraud or an act of 
God his affairs have suffered, his creditors 
are the first to be notified. He does not 
go on from bad to worse till his neighbors 
who have trusted him are cheated and con- 
founded. He does not with the wheels of 
his equipage splash the mud of the streets 
upon poor pedestrians, when his whole ef- 
fects would pay only a small part of his 



A Club of One 1 1^ 

indebtedness. He makes a clean breast Fairtoaii 
to his butcher and baker, as well as to his 
banker, that neither may have any advan- 
tage over the other. He takes no advan- 
tage of oversight or neglect, and meets 
misfortune more than half way. His pre- 
cepts and practices agree. If he or one of 
his children finds a sum of money, the act 
is not so hidden as to make it a theft. He 
will not have one penny that is not his — 
that cannot be accounted for. Clean 
hands, a clean conscience. There is a 
story of an old merchant who, on his death- Death-bed 
bed, divided the result of long years of Lz«'! 
labor, some few hundreds in all, amongst 
his sons. " It is little enough, my boys," 
were almost his last words, "but there 
isn't a dirty shilling in the whole of it." 

Every man with a generous share of good 
blood in him begins life a democrat and a 
reformer. " I am no more ashamed of hav- 
ing been a republican," says Southey, sayings o/ 
''than I am of having been a child." LordEidm. 
Lord Eldon said in his old age, that "■ if he 
were to begin life again, he would be 
damned but he would begin as agitator." 
There was a time in my own life when 
making the whole world over seemed to 



woman. 



114 A Club of One 

me not a very difficult or gigantic thing. 

For six For as much as six whole weeks the proc- 

formei'^^' css sccmed very simple and easy. All 
that was requisite, it appeared to me, was 
for the sinless to get together and deter- 
mine upon a plan to convert the sinful, — 
to make them sinless as themselves. Sim- 
plicity itself ! and as practicable as easy. 
The good had only to agree upon the man- 
ner of making over the bad, and the work 
was accomplished, — neatly, and with dis- 
patch. An old Latin author gives an ac- 

A pozverftd couut of a womau who believed that she 
'* could shake all the world with her fin- 
ger," and was afraid to close her hand, lest 
she should crush it like an apple. So easy 
the achievement of universal reformation 
seemed to be that the obvious reason for 
delaying it was the same that restrained 
the powerful woman, — a merciful hesita- 
tion of power, — a shuddering dread of dis- 
turbing things. Ah ! the omnipotence of 
edict, fiat, decree, ukase, act of parliament, 
act of congress, act of assembly, ordinance 
of council ! I did not then know of the 

Dead Stat- countlcss statutcs that are inoperative or 
dead from indisposition or inability to en- 
force them. What suggestive great books 
could be made by collecting them ! — mock- 



utes 



A Club of One ii^ 

ing commentaries upon the conceit and im- 
potence of statesmanship. My scheme for His scheme. 

delivering the world from evil was for the 

reformed of every place to assemble them- 
selves together ; — those 

who never drink ; 

who use no pernicious drugs ; 

who never gorge themselves at table ; 

who are never concupiscent ; 

who are never unchaste in thought, lan- 
guage, or conduct ; 

who perfectly control their appetites and 
passions ; 

who never deceive ; 

who never lie, prevaricate, or conceal the The good. 
truth ; 

who do not love money ; 

who do not oppress or insult the poor ; 

who do not envy or impugn the rich ; 

who do no wrong thing ; — 

to take into consideration the miserable 

multitude, 

who do drink ; 

who do make use of deleterious drugs ; 

who do overtax their digestive powers ; 

who are now and then concupiscent ; The bad. 

who are sometimes unchaste in thought, 
language, and conduct ; 

who do not control their desires and appe- 
tites ; 



ii6 A Cluh of One 

who deceive ; 

Those who who lie, prevaricate, and conceal the truth ; 

'^' ' who underestimate and grind the poor ; 
who love money ; 

who envy the rich, and impugn their mo- 
tives and conduct ; 
who do many wrong things ; — 
and at once, then and there, devise irref- 
ragable prohibitory laws for the absolute 
and complete reformation of their imper- 

Thegoodto feet brethren. To prohibit was to pro- 

convert the ,.,. « t i«iii 

bad, and kill hibit. Au cxcccdrng great army to kill the 

the devil. 

devil. The earth to be made a paradise 
again. But the world got in and possessed 
me before the great scheme was an- 
nounced. My opportunity was lost, and 
things have gone on in the usual bad way. 
Can it be, at last, that reforming is much a 
personal matter, to each one of us .-* Each 
to " cease to do evil, and learn to do well.'* 
It would seem so. 

The agony I suffered all of last night ! 
I believe it is the gout. The doctor don't 
think so ; but doctors differ. *' If your 
A saying of "physAcmn'' says Montaigne, "does not 
ontaigne. ^j^-^^^^ -^ good for you to slccp, to drink 
wine, or to eat such and such meats, never 
trouble yourself ; I will find you another 



A Club of One iiy 

that shall not be of his opinion." He calls 
it acute rheumatism, and says I read too 
much ! As if that had anything to do 
with gout ! Though I do admit the close 
relation of mind and body, and know how Mindand 
curiously they sometimes affect each other. ° ^' 
I mean to make a study of their interde- 
pendence, and know more of it. But how 
a few hours of study in my library could 
produce a fit of the gout is incomprehen- 
sible to me. From whatever cause, it 
is here, and must be removed. My limb 
in a vise, with two giants twisting it, 
would not be more horrible than the ag- 
ony I suffer. The Duke of Northumber- 
land suffered from gout. He had tried, he 
said, every remedy for it, as he believed, 
except one, which, in the case of a friend 
of his, proved efficacious, viz., the basti- Thebasu- 
nado. This had been applied to his friend Tot^t. '"' 
when traveling in Turkey, who was dis- 
abled by gout from descending from his 
palanquin to pay the required homage to 
the Grand Vizier ; and it actually cured 
him ! I trust so fearful a remedy may not 
be necessary in my case. 

I feel, and watch, and count my pulsa- counts his 
tions by the hour sometimes. George 



1 18 A Club of One 

Washington died watching his pulse, and 
I believe I shall do the same. Haller 

Nailer did kept feeling his pulse to the last moment, 
and when he found that life was almost 
gone, he turned to his brother physician, 
observing, " My friend, the artery ceases 
to beat," and almost instantly expired. 
The same remarkable circumstance had 

AndHar- occurrcd to the great Harvey ; he kept 

'"^^' making observations on , the state of his 

pulse when life was drawing to its close ; 
"as if," as was said, "that he who had 
taught us the beginning of life, might him- 
self, at his departing from it, become ac- 
quainted with that of death." Everything 
I know about the circulation terrifies me. 

The heart a Thc hcart — what a wonderful thing it is ! 

wojider/iil . 

thmg. To it we refer our joys, our sorrows, and 

our affections ; yet when grasped with the 
fingers, it gives no information of the fact 
to the possessor, unmistakably responding 
at the same time to the varied emotions of 
the mind. I think of these mysteries, in 
hours of sleeplessness, till I am almost dis- 
Accidents tractcd. Then the accidents and contin- 
Jericiel "' gcncics of Hfc appear to vex me. A thou- 
sand of them, it seems to me, appear to my 
mind at the same time. Though happen- 
ings, I try to think they are not always 



A Club of One iig 

misfortunes. There was that remarkable Dinner at 
dinner, one hot day, at Barrere's — men- 
tioned by Carlyle in his History. At this 
dinner, the day being so hot, the guests all 
stript their coats, and left them in the 
drawing - room : whereupon Carnot glided 
out ; groped in Robespierre's pocket ; found 
a list of forty [to be butchered by the guil- 
lotine], his own name among them ; "and 
tarried not at the wine - cup that day ! " 
At that fearful time, human life was noth- 
ing, and human bodies were treated as 
brutes. At Meudon, says Montgaillard, 
there was a tannery of human skins ; such a tannery 
of the guillotined as seemed worth flay- 'IkinT'''"' 
ing : of which perfectly good wash-leather 
was made ; for breeches and other uses. 
The skin of the men, he remarks, was su- 
perior in toughness and quality to cham- 
ois ; that of the women was good for al- 
most nothing, being so soft in texture. 
Which reminds me that after the battle 
of Munda, on the Guadalquivir, near Cor- 
dova, where Caesar routed the Pompeians, 
Munda (says Froude in his life of Caesar) 
was at once blockaded, the inclosing wall a waii huu 
— savage evidence of the ' temper of the bodies. 
conquerors — being built of dead bodies 
pinned together with lances, and on the 



120 



A Club of One c..An/vJL 

it a fringe of heads on sword*s '^, 



top of 

points with the faces turned towards the 

town. 



Self-right- 
eonsness. 



Sentimen- 
talism ami 
cant. 



A man and a woman called to know if I 
was supplied with the Bible ! There was 
nothing about them to remind me of " the 
shepherd " and '' the mother-in-law " in 
Pickwick. Oh, no ! Though I did detect 
a degree of self-righteousness lurking in 
their countenances. I might have shown 
them our Bible in every English version, 
and the bible of the Hindoos, of the Par- 
sees, of the Mahometans, and of the Mor- 
mons. Respectfully they retired, I did 
not remark the least condescension. The 
woman had, I thought, somewhat the 
look of old grandmother Falconer, who 
was a terror to her neighborhood ; be- 
cause, being a law to herself, she would 
therefore be a law to other people. The 
healthy heart that said to itself, " How 
healthy am I ! " was already fallen into 
the fatalest sort of disease. Is not sen- 
timentalism (I am quoting Carlyle) twin 
sister to cant, if not one and the same 
with it ? Is not cant the materia prima 
of the devil ; from which all falsehoods, 
imbecilities, abominations body them- 



A Cluh of One 121 

selves ; from which no two things can 
come ? For cant is itself properly a dou- 
ble-distilled lie ; the second power of a 
lie. The brain (says Dean Swift), in its Quotes 
natural position and state of serenity, dis- 
poseth its owner to pass his life in the 
common forms without any thought of 
subduing multitudes to his own power, his 
reasons, or his visions ; and the more he 
shapes his understanding by the pattern of 
human learning, the less he is inclined to 
form parties after his particular notions ; 
because that instructs him in his private 
infirmities, as well as in the stubborn ig- 
norance of the people. But when a man's 
fancy gets astride on his reason ; when 
imao-ination is at cuffs with the senses : imagination 

^ _ ^ at ctcffs with 

and common understanding, as well as the semes. 
common sense, is kicked out of doors, the 
first proselyte he makes is himself ; and 
when that is once compassed, the difficulty 
is not so great in bringing over others ; a 
strong delusion always operating from 
without, as vigorously as from within. For 
cant and vision are to the ear and the eye 
the same that tickling is to the touch. 
Those entertainments and pleasures we rheenter- 

. taiiiments 

most value m life are such as dupe and a^idpuas- 

2ircs we most 

play the wag with the senses. For, if we value. 



122 



A Club of One 



Hood''s de- 
testation of 
canters. 



Less rever- 
ential than 
a Mohawk 
squaw. 



take an examination of what is generally 
understood by happiness, as it has respect 
either to the understanding or the senses, 
we shall find all its properties and adjuncts 
will herd under this short definition : that 
it is a perpetual possession of being well 
deceived. Thomas Hood, of all men, had 
the greatest detestation of cante"rs. An 
awful widow, it is stated, having long pes- 
tered him with her insolent tracts and 
impious admonitions, he at length turned 
upon her, and wrote her a letter, — his 
Tract, as he styled it, — in which, perhaps, 
he used language somewhat too violent. 
He seems to have thought so himself, and 
concluded his performance with an apol- 
ogy. ''And now, madam, farewell. Your 
mode of recalling yourself to my memory 
reminds me that your fanatical mother 
insulted mine in the last days of her life 
(which was marked by every Christian 
virtue) by the presentation of a Tract ad- 
dressed to Infidels. I remember also that 
the same heartless woman intruded her- 
self, with less reverence than a Mohawk 
squaw would have exhibited, on the cham- 
ber of death, and interrupted with her 
jargon almost my very last interview with 
my dying parent. Such reminiscences war- 



A Club of One r2j 

rant some severity ; but if more be want- 
ing, know that my poor sister has been 
excited by a circle of canters like yourself 
into a religious frenzy, and is at this mo- 
ment in a private mad-house." Goodness, Goodness 
says Lamb, blows no trumpet, nor desires truZJI-t. 
to have it blown. "How beautiful, great, 
and pure goodness is ! It paints heaven 
on the face that has it ; it wakens the 
sleeping souls that meet it." "The throne 
of the gods is on the brow of a righteous 
man." Alas ! the devil lurks in many 
faces. The Arabs tell a thousand stories 
of certain hot waters in a grotto, which 
they call Pharaoh's Bath ; among others, Pharaoh's 
that if you put four eggs in it, you can 
take out but three, the devil always keep- 
ing one for himself. Innocence, unmiti- 
gated, is with the angels in heaven, and in 
pure little children on earth. " You wished 
to see Adam and Eve, who were our first 
parents ; there they are ; " said the dau- 
phine to her children. Then she left them 
in great astonishment before Titian's pic- Titian's 
ture, and seated herself by the bedside of 
the king, who delighted to watch the chil- 
dren. " Which of the two is Adam .? " 
said Francis, nudging his sister Margaret's 
elbow. " You silly," replied she ; " to know 



124 A Club of One 

that, they would have to be dressed." 
Said a sweet little boy, five years old, to 
his mother, '' Which am I, a boy or a girl ? 
I forget." Pretty incidents like these, in 
contrast with the ugly philanthropy that 
invaded my quiet with its self-righteous- 
A signif- ness, recalls the significant Hindoo fable : 
^doo/abiT Vishnu spake, '' O Bal ! take thy choice ; 
with five wise men shalt thou enter hell, 
or with five fools pass into paradise." 
Gladly answered Bal, '' Give me, O Lord, 
hell with the wise ; for that is heaven 
where the wise dwell, and folly would 
make of heaven itself a hell ! " 

A visit from Cousiu Tom, whom I have not seen for 
Tom!""" forty years, came unexpectedly to spend 
a few days with me. He has, to say the 
least, interested me very much. He is 
one of those persons they call professional 
invalids. The first words he said after his 
arrival were words of complaint. The 
great, lusty fellow came steaming in, com- 
plaining of the cold, when the mercury 
was only about twenty degrees above zero. 
I was glad to see him, and glad to have an 
Ani7tterest. Opportunity of studying such an interest- 
ingc arac ^^^ character. Tidings of him had reached 
me from time to time through letters from 



A Cluh of One 12^ 

my aunt Jane, — who always mentioned 
him kindly, but with slight expression of 
inextinguishable disgust at some of his 
ways. He troubles everybody about him 
with his perpetual complaints, but never Aiwaysco7n- 
in his life was he seriously sick. He 
weighs two hundred pounds, and is as 
round-limbed and muscular as he was at 
twenty. His teeth are all sound, and 
shine like ivory. '' Sovereignty would 
have pawned her jewels for them." A 
marvel of health, he is ever repeating the 
litany of his little miseries. To see him 
eat, and then to hear him complain of his 
digestion ! He clears voraciously his 
plate, piled up heaping with the richest 
viands, and then laments that he is not an Laments 

' that he is not 

anaconda ! It makes a sick man ashamed ^«^j«^- 
to see a well man such a fool. Nothing 
in the world is the matter with him but 
crop-sickness — the disgusting result of 
habitual over-feeding. His cough, that he 
has been dying of for twenty years, is of 
the stomach, sheerly and unmistakably. 
He feeds excessively, and suffers some- 
what, of course — why not } Is the man's ^'^'^^f/f 
head of no use to him .? Else, why persist him. 
in his folly } Is there, to think of it, any- 
thing so common that is of so little use as 



126 A Club of One 

heads ? The eggs and the sausages that 
the man ate for breakfast yesterday, and 
the cups of strong coffee that he drank to 
hasten them down ! And then to hear 
Swears at him swcar at his digestion, and envy the 
Hon, a?id en- h.Q?i\t\\y \ I had to endure it all, though 

vies the re • ^ • 

healthy. suiiermg at the time most acutely from an 
abscess, or rupture, or something, that is 
threatening my life. While he was moan- 
ing and groaning over his slight uneasi- 
nesses — the result of his enormous indul- 
gence and intemperance — I could n't help 
wishing that he could be really sick awhile, 
to know what real sickness is, and be cured 
of his pretenses. Later in the day his 

Scolds his abused nerves came in for a share of scold- 
ing, when he had devoured and burned to- 
bacco enough to poison a peccary. But 
why lecture him about his disgusting ap- 
petites ^ The stomach has no ears. Self- 
command does n't come of preaching — it 
is a result of self-training, self-denial, and 

Madame de eudurauce. Madame de Genlis was born 

Genlis. t i ... 

With numberless httle antipathies ; she 
had a horror of all insects, particularly of 
spiders and frogs. She was also afraid of 
mice, and her father made her feed and 
bring up one. He obliged her to catch 
spiders with her fingers, and to hold toads 



A Club of One i2y 

in her hands. At such times, though she 
felt that the blood had forsaken her veins, 
she was forced to obey. And so a habit rheJmbitof 
of self-command was established in the ^nand. 
woman who afterward became so com- 
manding in the French capital and at the 
court of France. Lamenting and wishing 
in such a case would have done no good, 
while discipline accomplished so much. 
Says Saadi : — 

'* Had the cat wings, no sparrow could live in the air ; A verse 
Had each his wish, what more would Allah have to •^''^"' ^'''"^'^ 
spare ? " 

If some such a result attended my cousin's 
indulgence as the story illustrates, there 
would be some compensation in it. It is 
of a workman pulling his wife out of a 
ditch, with the remark, *' Why, Nanny, 
you are drunk." '' And what do that ar- 
gify, if I am happy.'*" Charles Mathews, one of 
in one of his amusing entertainments, used Mlthews' 
to tell a story of a certain innkeeper, who 
made it a rule of his house, to allow a 
candle to a guest only on condition of his 
ordering a pint of wine. Whereupon the 
guest contends, on the reciprocity system, 
for a light for every half-bottle, and finally 
drinks himself into a general illumination. 
But the belly-gods get no pleasure from 



128 A Club of One 

their indulgence except while they are eat- 
ing. They are hardly away from the ta- 
ble, when they begin to complain of their 
aches. It is a wonder that they don't get 
Crabb Rob- provoked at their own growling. Crabb 
b^rkifgdog. Robinson refers to the continued barking 
of a dog, irritated by the echo of his own 
voice, which was made by Wordsworth the 
subject of a sonnet. In human life this is 
constantly occurring. It is said that a dog 
has been known to contract an illness by 
the continued labor of barking at his own 
echo. My cousin Tom is invariably seized 
^T^^sfitof with a fit of coughing whenever a cough 
coughing, jg recollected, referred to, or heard. A re- 
membrance of his own pretended ailment 
is sure to be followed by a violent, sono- 
rous expiration. It is a wonder that his 
whole breathing and swallowing apparatus 
was not long ago torn to pieces by his per- 
sistent straining ; and not a bit surprising 
that something like an asthma should have 
crept into his chest — the direct result, 
not so much of his stomach cough, as the 
habit of indulging and cultivating it. At- 
tending to his cough has been a great part 
Hiscougkan of his busiuess for twenty years — a trans- 

excusefor •' ■' 

idleness. parent excuse for his chronic idleness. If 
he had had to earn each one of his dollars 



A Club of One 129 

by ten hours in the sun, his cough, as he 

calls it, would never have existed. Occu- occupation 

^1 , 1 1 • . t t^^^ great 

pation IS the great blessing ; we must be blessing. 
engaged at something or suffer. Diana 
was chaste because she was never idle, but 
always busy about her hunting. But for 
every day's diligence in my library I do 
believe I should not myself be able to sur- 
vive. Nothing but my books could enable 
me to endure my distresses. There is a 
story of a gentleman who was under close 
confinement in the Bastile seven \^2,x^ \ a story of 

■1 • 1 . , . 1 IT- 1 r . 1 the Bastile. 

dunng which time he amused himselr with 
scattering a few small pins about his 
chamber, gathering them up again, and 
placing them in different figures on the 
arm of a great chair. He often told his 
friends afterwards that unless he had 
found out this piece of employment, he 
verily believed he should have lost his 
senses. Sir Astley Cooper, when in re- sir Astiey 

Cooper. 

tirement, satiated with wealth and honors, 
is described as looking over the trees of 
his park with a conviction that some day 
he should bans; himself from one of them. 
He had spent his life in routine work, and 
it was too late to educate his mind to any- 
thing else. Ennui, as Madame Roland de-~^\ 
fines it, is the disease of hearts without^/ 



I ^o A Club of One 

feeling, and of minds without resources. 
,A writer in the London Spectator calls it 
a mental low fever. It has also been de- 
fined to be an afflicting sensation for want 
Idleness the of a scnsatlon. Whatever it is, idleness is 

cause of 

ennui. x\^q prime cause of it. Montaigne relates 
that when once walking in the fields he 
was accosted by a beggar of Herculean 
frame,, who solicited alms. "Are you not 
ashamed to beg t " said the philosopher, 
with a frown, — " you who are so palpably 
able to work } " '* Oh, sir," was the sturdy 
knave's drawling rejoinder, ** if you only 
knew how lazy I am ! " Jeremy Taylor 
said to a lady of his acquaintance, who had 
been very neglectful of the education of 

'^hJTreli"'^' ■'^^^ ^°^' i M^dam, if you do not choose to 
fill your boy's head with something, be- 
lieve me, the devil will." The Turks have 
a proverb that the devil tempts all other 
men, but that idle men tempt the devil. 
In general, says Montesquieu, we place 
idleness among the beatitudes of heaven ; 
it should rather be put among the tor- 
ments of hell. 

For one, I believe and afiirm that the 
Theprofes- idle, self-iudulgcnt, professional invalid 
zS. "'' ought to be put out of the way. He de- 



A Club of One i ^i 

presses and irritates and aggravates and 
infuriates everybody who is much with 
him or about him. The atmosphere he 
carries with him is bhghting. The infi- 
nite ill effects of permitting him to live is Effects of 

permitting 

illustrated in the results of the mistaken himtoUve 

tlltistrated. 

humanity of the philosopher in his treat- 
ment of the flea, described so felicitously 
by a veracious Frenchman. Causes and 
effects are set down numerically. I. The 
former, having been bitten by the latter, 
seized and was about to dispatch his foe, 
when he reflected that the little insect had 
only acted from instinct, and was not to 
be blamed. Accordingly, he deposited the 
flea on the back of a passing dog. II. This 
dog was the poodle of a lady, and she was The goodie 

"^ -^ o/a lady. 

very fond of the pretty animal. On his 
return to the house, his mistress took him 
upon her lap to caress him, and the flea 
embraced the opportunity to change his 
habitat. III. The flea having in the course 
of the night engaged in active business 
operations, awakened the lady. Her hus- 
band was sleeping peacefully beside her, 
and in the silence of the chamber she 
heard him in his dreams whisper, with an jealousy 
access of ineffable tenderness, a name ['"'''' 
The name was that of her most intimate 



J3' 



A Club of One 



The big 

damiiiiig 

discovery. 



Reconciled. 



friend. IV. As soon as it was day the 
outraged wife hurried to the house of her 
rival, and told the rival's husband of the 
big damning discovery she had made. He, 
being a man of decision, at once called out 
the destroyer of his household's peace, and 
ran him through. V. The widow, when 
her husband was taken home to her on a 
shutter, was so terribly smitten with re- 
morse that she precipitated herself from 
the fourth story window. VI. The other 
lady convinced her husband that he had 
wronged her by entertaining any suspicion 
as to her fidelity, and, becoming reconciled 
with him, seized an early opportunity of 
poisoning him. VII. Inasmuch as the ju- 
rors of that country had never heard of " ex- 
tenuating circumstances," and the Chief 
Magistrate, thinking that he could not put 
a murderer to better uses than by guillo- 
tining him, the guilty woman was duly be- 
Tkesoiesur- hcadcd, and the sole survivors of the trag- 

vivors the 

philosopher edy wcrc the philosopher and the flea. It 

andthejlea. -^ 

would not do to provide hospitals for the 
professional invalids. The effect of herd- 
ing them would be much the same as that 
resulting from the habit of old Jews from 
all parts of the world, who go to lay their 
bones upon the sacred soil (described so 



A Club of One i^^ 

vividly by Kinglake in his matchless little 

book of travel). *'As these people," he a suggestive 

, . . . ^ passage 

says, '* never return to their homes, it roi- from King- 
lows that any domestic vermin which they 
may bring with them are likely to become 
permanently resident, so that the popula- 
tion is continually increasing. No recent 
census had been taken when I was at Tibe- 
rias, but I know that the congregation of 
fleas which attended at my church alone 
[what could be more remindful of the 
numberless irritating effects of voluntary 
invalidism .?] must have been something 
enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking a camai, 

in. • ,1 self-seeking 

congregation, wholly inattentive to the congrega- 
service which was going on, and devoted 
to the one object of having my blood. 
The fleas of all nations were there. The 
smug, steady, importunate flea from Holy- 
well street — the pert, jumping, *puce' 
from hungry France — the wary, watch- 
ful ' pulce ' with his poisoned stiletto — 
the vengeful ' pulga ' of Castile with his 
ugly knife — the German * floh ' with his 
knife and fork — insatiate — not rising 
from table — whole swarms from all the swarms 

. . . - , 11 andliordes. 

Russias, and Asiatic hordes unnumbered 
— all these were there, and all rejoiced in 
one great international feast. After pass- 



^34 



A Cluh of One 



your body. 



ing a night like this [bad enough, but not 
to be compared with three whole days with 
Glad to pick Tom], you are glad to pick up the wretched 
mains of rcmalus of your body long, long before 
morning dawns. Your skin is scorched — 
your temples throb ; your lips feel with- 
ered and dried ; your burning eyeballs are 
screwed inwards against the brain. You 
have no hope but only in the saddle, and 
in the freshness of the morning air." Un- 



Pro/essionai happily, thcsc miserable professional inva- 

invalids a 
privileged 
class. 



Totally 
selfish. 



lids that I am writing about and illustra- 
ting constitute a privileged class of society. 
Charles Lamb called them ''kings." Such 
persons, whether their imagined diseases 
be of the mind or body, in the opinion 
of the dissecting Hawthorne, are made 
acutely conscious of a self, by the torture 
in which it dwells. Self, therefore, grows 
to be so prominent an object with them, 
that they cannot but present it to the face 
of every carnal passer-by. This cousin of 
mine is so wrapped up in himself — is 
such a sublime egotist — that when I men- 
tion a real distress of my own — that 
threatens life itself with its awful gravity 
— he gives but a lazy, half-attention — 
amounting to no more, at best, than what 
Coleridge calls a mental yawn. To have 



A Club of One /^5 

one's ills aggravated in that manner by a 
mere pretender in misery is enough to 
awaken all the Satanic in human nature. 
I wish my cousin would go away. Even wishes his 
sick people, I think, with Montaigne (who go away." 
was much of an invalid himself, and talked 
quite enough of his maladies), should pub- 
lish and communicate their joy, as much 
as they can, and conceal and smother their 
grief. He that makes himself pitied with- 
out reason is a man not to be pitied when 
there shall be real cause ; to be always 
complaining is the way never to get sym- 
pathy ; by making himself out always so 
miserable, he is never commiserated by ^vever 
any. He that makes himself dead when 
living is subject to be held as though 
alive when he is dying. " We are apt," 
says Hawthorne again, " to make sickly 
people more morbid, and unfortunate peo- 
ple more miserable, by endeavoring to 
adapt our deportment to their especial and 
individual needs. They eagerly accept 
our well-meant efforts ; but it is like re- 
turning their own sick breath back upon 
themselves, to be breathed over and over 
again, intensifying the inward mischief at 
every repetition. The sympathy that thythat^'" 
would really do them good is of a kind ThJLgood. 



com- 

viiserated. 



136 



A Club of One 



that recognizes their sound and healthy 
parts, and ignores the part affected by dis- 
ease, which will thrive under the eye of a 
too close observer like a poisonous weed 
in the sunshine." Herodotus speaks of a 
tribe who treated their sick in a way pe- 
Discoicrag- cuHarly discouraging to invalidism. When 

i7ig to hi- r -x^ -I I- \ • r r ' 

vaiidism. any one tell sick, his chief friends told 
him that the illness would spoil his flesh ; 
whereupon he would protest that he was 
not unwell ; but they, not agreeing with 
him, would kill and eat him. Naturalists 
tell us that if one of a flock of wolves 
wound himself, or so much as limp, the 
rest eat him up incontinently. Oh ! Mercy 
on me ! Three days more of my cousin 
Tom would kill me. Will he never go 
away t 



A habit of 
wolves. 



In rearranging my books this morning I 
encountered a favorite volume that I had 
missed the sight of for a year or two. I 
was glad to see it — a valuable old friend. 
Foster's Es- It is a little, rude copy in boards of Foster's 
Essays — Andover, 1826. This is one of 
those little books that have had incalculable 
influence. It is filled with vigorous, cast- 
iron thought, from the first word to the last. 
The author often spent hours on a single 



A Club of One j ^y 

sentence. I know of nothing in literature 
that is a better stimulant for the mind, or 
tonic for the character, than the essay on 
Decision. And, strange to say, these es- 
says were written as love epistles to the written as 
lady who afterward became his wife. She """^ '^''^^^'• 
had intimated to him that she could never 
consent to be the wife of a man who could 
not distinguish himself in the literature of 
his country ; and the famous essays were 
written to her in the form of letters, to 
prove to her that he possessed the requisite 
ability. Miss Maria Snooke, I think, was Miss Maria. 
the name of the notably exacting maiden. 
She must have been a remarkable woman. 
He describes her in his Diary (at the time 
he was courting her) as *'a marble statue, 
surrounded by iron palisades." Long ago, 
when I was a bit of a boy, I saw it stated 
that a distinguished American orator and 
statesman, then living, had said that he 
owed incomparably more to Foster's Es- 
says than to any other one book in litera- 
ture. Remembering the statement, I tried 
again and again to buy the book ; but the Efforts to 
bookseller knew nothing about it. At last, took. 
I found it in a gentleman's library, offered 
for sale in pecuniary extremity ; he being 
one of those rare individuals who could be 



13S A Club of One 

economical in everything but in books. It 
was put up by the auctioneer only a minute 
after I had dropped in, and I was so de- 
lighted at the prospect of being the owner 
of the long-sought volume, that I bid three 
quarters of a dollar for it at once, and it was 

Knocked as quickly knocked down to me, — the gap- 
ing bystanders, of course, laughing heart- 
ily at me for giving so much for a little 
half -worn book that I might as well have 
had for a shilling. I went home elated 
with my purchase, and spent half the night 
over it. It was very evident that its former 
owner was an intelligent and close reader, 
for some very significant marks and reflec- 
tions covered the margins of some of the 
pages. Wherever I went, I always carried 

The treas- the treasure with me ; and later, it was one 
of the few books I always kept in my down- 
town office. It was one of the most com- 
fortable offices in the block, and two or three 
of the dozen women employed by the jani- 
tor, by permission, enjoyed its comforts on 
Sundays and at odd hours when I was ab- 
sent. One of them was a remarkable per- 
son, and I have often thought of her since. 

Margaret. Margaret, I remember, was the girl's name. 
She must have had the blood of kings in 
her veins. Of the books on the shelf, she 



A Club of One i ^g 

liked Foster's Essays best, she said ; of 
which both the appearance of the volume 
and her acquaintance with it gave indubita- 
ble evidence. She had a very strong mind 
and magnificent passions. There was maj- 
esty in her mien, though a poor working wo- 
man. Regal she was, in countenance, sug- Regaiin 

cou7tte?uince. 

gestmg Zenobia or Cleopatra. She seemed 
to me to be " clad in the usual weeds of 
high habitual state," so commanding and 
noble was her bearing. Her hair was so 
abundant as to appear a burden to her. 
But her remarkable eye is most distinct in 
my memory. It was a true Irish eye, — 
''gray, with long, dark lashes, and with lids 
deep set and well chiseled, — an eye speak- 
ing mingled innocence, mirth, and tender- 
ness quite unmatched by any human orb." 
Once I saw it when it seemed to hover and 
melt over the dear spot and dear ones in 
her far-away, never-forgotten home, on the 
other side of the sea. Moore's pen would 
have run wild describing her. But the 
black drop was somehow mingled in her Thebiack 
rich nature. " The beautiful river ! The Z^tirl 
beautiful river ! " she exclaimed, looking 
down out of the fourth story window, with 
that pensive far-away expression so pecu- 
liar to her ; and a moment after she was 



140 A Club of One 

picked up in the court, a pitiful, quivering 
mass of dead humanity. At the inquest I 
had an opportunity of paying tribute to her 
•Strong understanding and lofty moral na- 
ture. I set this down at a time when every 
faculty of my mind seems floating in rem- 
iniscence. 

It takes two at least, it seems, to make 
The perfect a pcrfcct ballad. ''What can be prettier," 

ballad. ^ . . . . ^ 

says Cowper, m one or his exquisite letters, 
"■ than Gay's ballad, or rather Swift's, Ar- 
buthnot's. Pope's, and Gay's, in the What 
do you call it .-^ — ' 'T was when the seas 
were roaring ' } I have been well informed 
that that most celebrated association of 
clever fellows all contributed to it." And 
I suspect Gay had like help in the composi- 
tion of Black Eyed Susan — another of his 
ballads not less remarkable for its perfec- 
johnAnder- tion. John Andcrson, my jo, John, all the 
John. world has been in the habit of regarding 

as another perfect ballad, till a verse lately 
added to it by a gentleman in northern Ohio 
proved it to have been, as Burns left it, far 
from being perfect. The additional verse 
was sent to me in manuscript, as taken 
from the lips of the author, and should 
make his name famous if he never wrote 



A Club of One 141 

another line. I have copied it into the 
margin of my Burns, alongside the poem, 
and also copy it here, to preserve it further, 
in case the book should be spirited away. 

"John Anderson, my jo, John, Aft addi- 

We winna mind that sleep; ^ ^'^''"^ '"'''''■ 

The grave sae cauld and still, John, 

The spirit canna keep : 
But we will wake in Heaven, John, 

Where young again we '11 grow, 
And ever live, in blessed luve, 

John Anderson, my jo." 

Hov^^ Burns and the author of this stanza 
will strike hands on the other shore! I 
should like to witness the meeting of the 
two bards. Ah ! the matchless poet of 
humanity ! '' Since Adam," said Margaret 
Fuller, " there has been none that ap- 
proached nearer fitness to stand up before 
God and angels in the naked majesty of 
manhood than Robert Burns." But she Bums. 
speaks of the ''serpent in his field also." 
Though two nieces of Burns, living in the 
suburbs of Ayr, believed, when talked to 
by an American lady about Burns' intem- 
perate habits, that they had been greatly 
exaggerated. Their mother was a woman 
twenty-five years old and the mother of 
three children when he died, and she had 
never once seen him the " waur for liquor.'* 



/^2 A Club of One 

" There were very many idle people i' the 

warld, an' a great deal o' talk, " they said. 

Byron's " What," asks Byron, in his Journal, 

qtiestion. . 

" would Burns have been, if a patrician ? 
We should have had more polish — less 
force — just as much verse, but no immor- 
tality — a divorce, and a duel or two, the 
which had he survived, as his potations 
must have been less spirituous, he might 
A reference havc Hvcd as long as Shcridan, and out- 

to Sheridaji. 

lived as much as poor Brinsley." Of Scot- 
land, it has been significantly remarked, 
the creed is the Westminster Confession, 
but the national poet is Burns. 

It is Saint Valentine's Day, and there is 
A dance at 3. daucc at the house opposite. I can iust 

me house op- 

posite. see, through the lace curtains, the " floating 

radiances " swimming and gliding about. 
How it all carries me back ! Ah ! at twenty, 
with a sweetheart of sixteen ! Happy then, 
miserable now. At the recollection, my 
heart " flows like a sea." It is the touch 
of a maiden's hand, according to the Orien- 
tal legend, that causes the trees to bloom. 
" For the first time," says Jean Paul, " I 
held a beloved being upon my heart and 

Theo7te lips. I havc nothing further to say, but that 

pearl of a .^ ^, , . . 

mimite. it was thc ouc pcarl 01 a minute, that was 



A Club of One 14^ 

never repeated ; a whole longing past and a 
dreaming future were united in a moment, 
and in the darkness behind my closed eyes 
the fire -works of a whole life were evolved 
in a glance. Ah, I have never forgotten 
it — the ineffaceable moment ! " Madame Madame 

, . . T Ml Roland. 

Roland, at sixteen, is described as most 
fascinating in mind and person. Many suit- 
ors began to appear, one after another, but 
she manifested no interest in any of them. 
The customs of society in France were 
such at that time, that it was difficult for 
any one who sought the hand of the young 
lady to obtain an introduction to her. Con- 
sequently the expedient was usually adopt- 
ed of writing first to her parents. These 
letters were always immediately shown to 
her. She judged of the character of the 
writer by the character of the epistles. Her 
father, knowing her intellectual superiority, 
looked to her as his secretary to reply to all Her father's 

secretary in 

these letters. She consequently wrote the deikatemat- 
answers, which her father carefully copied 
and sent in his own name. She was often 
amused with the gravity with which she, 
as the father of herself, with parental pru- 
dence, discussed her own interests. In 
subsequent years she wrote to kings and 
to cabinets in the name of her husband : 



144 ^ Club of One 

and the sentiments which flowed from her 

pen, adopted by the ministry of France as 

Guided tJie their own, guided the councils of nations, 

cotincils of ... ^ - , . 

7iaiio7is. Beauty is in the eye of the gazer, and is 
beauty still, however you disguise it. The 
Due de Richelieu had a portrait gallery of 
contemporary beauties, each attired in the 
costume of a nun. The magic of the ten- 

Lamar- dcr passlou ! Raphael, in Lamartine's pas- 

sionateiove- siouatc lovc-story, regarded his Julie as one 
of those delusions of fancy, one of those 
women above mortal height, like Tasso's 
Eleonora, Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Lau- 
ra, or Vittoria Colonna, the lover, the poet, 
and the heroine at once ; forms that flit 
across the earth, scarcely touching it, and 
without tarrying, only to fascinate the eyes 
\ of some men, the privileged few of love, to 
\ lead on their souls to immortal aspirations, 
\ and to be the sursum corda of superior im- 

/?/«7/z«z^A aginations. But the disillusion, after being 
wrought up by the dazzling contemplation ! 
An old book of English legal reminiscences 
tells us that on the Norfolk circuit the fa- 
mous Jack Lee was retained for the plain- 
tiff in an action for breach of promise of 
marriage : when the brief was brought him, 
he asked whether the lady for whose injury 
he was to seek redress was good-looking. 



A Club of One 14^ 

" Very handsome, indeed, sir," was the as- 
surance of Helen's attorney. "Then, sir," 
replied Lee, *' I beg you to request her to be Lee's re- 
in court, and in a place where she can be 
seen." The attorney promised compliance ; 
and the lady, in accordance with Lee's 
wishes, took her seat in a conspicuous place. 
Lee, in addressing the jury, did not fail to Eloquence. 
insist with great warmth on the "abomi- 
nable cruelty " which had been practiced 
towards " the lovely and confiding female '* 
before them, and did not sit down until 
he had succeeded in working up their feel- 
ings to the desired point. The counsel on 
the other side, however, speedily broke the 
spell with which Lee had enchanted the 
jury, by observing that his learned friend 
in describing the graces and beauty of the 
plaintiff had not mentioned the fact — that 
the lady had a wooden leg ! The court was The court 
convulsed with laughter, while Lee, who 
was ignorant of this circumstance, looked 
aghast ; and the jury, ashamed of the influ- 
ence that mere eloquence had had upon 
them, returned a verdict for the defendant. 
"Ah, poor Pen ! " exclaims Thackeray, when 
Pen was no longer in love with the Foth- 
eringay, " the delusion is better than the 
truth sometimes, and fine dreams to dismal 



A Cluh of One 



Thackeray'' s 
philosophy. 



Old sweet- 
hearts. 



Should al- 
ways thhik 
'wellofthe7n. 



waking." Though, happen what may, we 
will recur to the good times agone, and con- 
sole ourselves in the philosophic manner of 
the same great master : " I am," he says, 
" tranquil : I am quiet : I have passed the 
hot stage : and I do not know a pleasanter 
and calmer feeling of mind than that of a 
respectable person of the middle age, who 
can still be heartily and generously fond of 
all the women about whom he was in a 
passion and a fever in early life. If you 
cease liking a woman when you cease lov- 
ing her, depend on it, that one of you is a 
bad one. You are parted, never mind with 
what pangs on either side, or by what cir- 
cumstances of fate, choice, or necessity, — 
you have no money or she has too much, 
or she likes somebody else better, and so 
forth ; but an honest Fogy should always, 
unless reason be given to the contrary, 
think well of the woman whom he has once 
thought well of, and remember her with 
kindness and tenderness, as a man re- 
members a place where he has been very 
happy." But the dance at the house oppo- 
site. The movement seems to me too rapid. 
There is not enough of repose, so to speak, 
in the modern dancing. I should like once 
more to see a minuet, in the old-time style. 



mer- 
ican idol- 



A Club of One 147 

The minuet was the dance of kings, the riiedanceo/ 
poetry of the courtly salon. George Wash- '''^^' 
ington was at home in the stately move- 
ment, and he has been pronounced *'the 
most decorous and respectable person that 
ever went ceremoniously through the reali- 
ties of life." Hawthorne imagined he was 
born with his clothes on, and his hair pow- 
dered, and made a stately bow on his first 
appearance in the world. I should like to 
set down the circumstance of Gouverneur 
Morris's rebuff, upon approaching familiarly 
the great American idol — related so inter- The 
estingly by an early annalist ; but my hand 
is weary with too much writing. The doc- 
tor will scold. I can only refer to the con- 
trast of the ancient, reposeful minuet, with 
the unceremonious, rapid, familiar waltz of 
the moderns, and quote some piquant lines, 
inclosed by Sir Thomas Lawrence to Lord 
Mountjoy : — 

ON WALTZING. On waltz- 

ing. 

" What ! the girl I adore by another embraced ! 

What ! the balm of her breath shall another man taste ! 

What ! pressed in the whirl by another's bold knee ! 

What ! panting, recline on another than me ! 

Sir, she 's yours. You have brushed from the grape its 

soft blue ; 
From the rosebud you 've shaken its tremulous dew : 
What you 've touched you may take — pretty waltzer 

adieu ! " 



148 A Club of One 

My books ! What would my life be with- 
out them ? They are my meat and my 
drink. They employ my mind and lift me 
out of myself. In hours of mental exalta- 
tion I forget my miserable body. I have a 
book for every mood and every condition. 
When my mind is strongest and clearest 
and freest, I range the upper fields of phi- 

piato. losophy with Plato ; when I am most in- 
clined to pure reason, I listen to brave 
Socrates ; when I am in temper for obser- 
vation, I read ^Esop ; when I want to real- 
ize the power of light over darkness, I 
tread the dawn with Epictetus ; when I 
want to breathe the atmosphere of the Cae- 
sars, I follow Suetonius ; then I walk with 
Cicero and his nomenclator in the streets 
of the Eternal City, and study the arts of 
the Roman politician ; of moral exaltation, 
I find a rare example in the heathen em- 

Marcus An- pcror Marcus Antoninus ; gods, and demi- 
gods, and heroes fight for me in Homer ; w 
if I want to sup with horrors, I sit down in 
terror with ^schylus, witnessing the ghost 
of Clytemnestra rushing into Apollo's tem- 
ple, and rousing the sleeping Furies ; if 
I want a refreshing ride in the chariot of 
the sun, I take a seat with Phaeton, in • 
Ovid ; at will, I range paradise with Mil- 



A Club of One i4g 

ton, and explore perdition with Dante ; 
when I hunger for the world, and want to 
see every type of man and woman per- 
fectly represented, I read Shakespeare ; shake- 
when I want to study human nature, I ^^^"''^^' 
take Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, and 
Faust ; to feel the inspiration of freedom, 
I scale the heights and storm the fast- 
nesses with Schiller ; I gossip with wise 
old Montaigne ; think with Pascal ; moral- Montaigne. 
ize with Sir Thomas Browne ; quote and 
comment with Burton ; rummage with Dis- 
raeli ; laugh with Rabelais ; enjoy the sug- 
gestive experiences of Gil Bias ; am always 
amused and entertained with Tristram 
Shandy ; Tom Jones — who could ever tire 
of it ? or of Humphry Clinker ? or of Rod- 
erick Random ? or Swift's Gulliver ? though 
I am terrified sometimes with its pitiless 
wisdom ; I go a-fishing with Izaak*, and izaak ivai. 
participate (the slightest) his meekness and 
sweet contentment ; I listen to sermons 
from Bourdaloue, and Bossuet, and Mas- 
sillon, and Barrow, and South, and Chal- 
mers, and Wesley, and Hall ; I take down 
Foster when I want to read a little and 
think more of times gone by and difficulties 
overcome ; then I philosophize with Sou- 
vestre in his Attic ; then enjoy the caustic 



i^o A Club of One 

wit and keen satire of Thackeray, and con- 
template his immortal creations ; then the 

Dickens. humanitics of Dickens quicken me to tears, 
and a long procession of the creatures of 
his teeming brain move before me ; Sir 
Walter, too, who is history enough for me 

Bums. now ; and Burns — the one immortal bard 
of humanity — to be cherished and sung 
while man is man, ever and ever ; and phil- 
osophic Wordsworth ; and poetic Shelley 
and Keats ; and the moral and wise Sam 
Johnson ; and the gentle and exquisite 
Goldsmith ; and the storming Carlyle, — 
mighty hater and smiter of cant and 
shams ; then I discourse with Coleridge ; 
pun and turn over rare old books with 

Lamb. gentle Elia ; luxuriate with abounding Ma- 
caulay ; dream with De Quincey ; expa- 
tiate with Hazlitt and Hunt ; then to the 
Brontes — Charlotte especially ; then to 
Miss Austen — so healthy, serene, and 
i pure ; then to something more thoughtful 
again — to Emerson, the reflective, the 
wise, the exalted — fit society for Plato in 
the empyrean ; then to Hawthorne — dis- 
sector, interpenetrator of hearts and lives ; 
to scholarly, witty, shrewd Lowell — critic, 

Holmes. poct, ambassador ; to Holmes — so acute, 
humorous, suggestive, and philosophical in 



A Club of One, r^i . 

the Autocrat and Elsie — altogether unique 
in literature ; and when a taste for some- 
thing light, and finished, and exquisite, 
seizes me, I read the Reveries, and Prue 
and I ; and so I go on and on, feasting 
with the worthies, and banqueting with the 
celestials, as inclination or whim pleases 
me — a precious book, as I said, for every 
mood and every condition. 

Books ! books ! It was estimated, some Books! 
years ago, that ten million volumes, first 
and last, had been published since the art 
of printing was discovered — with an av- 
erage edition of three hundred — aggregat- 
ing three thousand million volumes ! Yet 
tradition in Cambridge has recorded that 
Bentley said he desired and thought him- 
self likely to live to fourscore, an age long 
enough, he thought, to read everything 
which was worth reading. But single 
books, and little ones — what influence f rx^ 
they have exerted ! Elizabeth Wallbridge, 
The Dairyman's Daughter, is known to The Dairy- 

T '1 '1 11 »-r-ii mail's 

every tract distributor in the world. The Daughter. 
tract containing the story of her life has 
been translated into nineteen languages, 
and has had a circulation of four million 
copies. The circulation of Uncle Tom's 



!^2 A Club of One 

Cabin has been even more remarkable. 
And Thomas a Kempis's Imitation — 
think of the influence of that. Leigh 
Hunt, in his Autobiography, speaks of a 
riot at Lyons about an equestrian statue of 
Louis XIV., meant to overawe the city 
with Bourbon memories. We met, he 
says, the statue on the road. I had 
bought in that city a volume of the songs 

Beranger. of Berangcr, and I thought to myself, as I 
met the statue, " I have a little book in my 
pocket which will not suffer you to last 
long." And surely enough, down it went : 
for down went King Charles, Books, 
thought Mrs. Barbauld, are a kind of per- 
petual censors on men and manners ; they 
judge without partiality, and reprove with- 
out fear or affection. There are times 
when the flame of virtue and liberty seems 
/ almost to be extinguished amongst the ex- 

Animated isting generation ; but their animated pages 
are always at hand to rekindle it. The 
despot trembles on his throne, and the 
bold, bad man turns pale in his closet at 
the sentence pronounced against him ages 
before he was born. Happily, the best 
\ books are the commonest, and are always 
\in use. (Erskine used to say that in ad- 
dressing juries he had found there were 



pages. 



A Club of One 75^ 

three books, and only three, which he could \ 
always quote with effect, Shakespeare, Mil- ] 
ton, and the Bible. Milton's favorite vol- Poets' /avor- 
umes were Homer, Ovid, and Euripides ; 
Dante's was Virgil ; Schiller's was Shake- \ 
speare ; Gray's was Spenser ; Goethe's was \ 
Spinoza's Ethics ; Bunyan's was the old \ 
legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. The \ 
two books which most impressed John 
Wesley, when young, were the Imitation wesiey's 
of Christ, and Taylor's Holy Living and ^^ ^^^'^"' 
Dying. De Quincey's favorite few were 
Donne, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Mil- 
ton, South, Barrow, and Sir Thomas 
Browne. Napoleon never wearied of read- 
ing Ossian and the Sorrows of Werther. 
Miss Austen's novels were favorites with 
Macaulay ; he enjoyed them especially for 
their serenity. Thackeray was particularly 
fond of Humphry Clinker ; he believed it Humphry 
to be " the most laughable story that has 
ever been written since the goodly art of 
novel-writing began." Douglas Jerrold had 
an almost reverential fondness for books — 
books themselves — and said he could not 
bear to treat them, or to see them treated, 
with disrespect. It always gave him pain 
to see them turned on their faces, stretched 
open, or dog's eared, or carelessly flung 



J54 



A Club of One 



Deliciozis in- 
ebriation. 



Pope to 
Spence. 



Daitte ab- 
sorbed. 



Zeal for 
classic au- 
thors. 



down, or in any way misused. Bayle, it is 
known, gave up every sort of recreation, 
except that delicious inebriation of his fac- 
ulties which he drew from his books. If 
the riches of both Indies, said Fenelon ; if 
the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe 
were laid at my feet, in exchange for my 
love for reading, I would spurn them all. 
At this day, said Pope to Spence, as much 
company as I have kept, and as much as 
I love it, I love reading better. I would 
rather be employed in reading than in the 
most agreeable conversation. There is a 
story that Dante, having gone one day to 
the house of a bookseller, from one of whose 
windows he was to be a spectator of a pub- 
lic show exhibited in the square below, by 
chance took up a book, in which he soon 
got so absorbed that on returning home, 
after the spectacle was over, he solemnly 
declared that he had neither seen nor heard 
anything whatever of all that had taken 
place before his eyes. Scott, in Waverley, 
describes the Baron of Bradwardine as a 
scholar, according to the scholarship of 
Scotchmen ; that is, his learning was more 
diffuse than accurate, and he was rather a 
reader than a grammarian. Of his zeal for 
the classic authors he is said to have given 



w ztncon- 



A Club of One 755 

an unconscious instance. On the road be- a 
tween Preston and London he made his ^stance"'' 
escape from his guards ; but being after- 
wards found loitering near the place where 
they had lodged the former night, he was 
recognized and again arrested. His com- 
panions, and even his escort, were sur- 
prised at his infatuation, and could not 
help inquiring why, being once at liberty, 
he had not made the best of his way to a 
place of safety ; to which he replied, that 
he had intended to do so, but, in good 
faith, he had returned to seek his Titus 
Livius, which he had forgot in the hurry 
of his escape. Plato's cave, in which he Plata's cave. 
supposes a man to be shut up all his life 
with his back to the light, and to see noth- 
ing of the figures of men or other objects 
that pass by but their shadows on the op- 
posite wall of his cell, so that when he is 
let out and sees the real figures he is only 
dazzled and confounded by them, seemed 
to Hazlitt an ingenious satire on the life satire on 
of a bookworm. I confess to the French- bookworm. 
man's hatred of a dirty book. It is in 
truth an error to suppose that the dirt on 
the cover and pages of a book is a sign of 
its studious employment. Those who use 
books to most purpose handle them with 



136 



A Cluh of One 



Book-bor- loving care. And as to persistent book- 
borrowing, book-owners can hardly trust 
themselves to speak of it. Its common- 
ness does not excuse the offense. It is 
said that Lord Eldon, when chancellor, 
greatly augmented his library by borrow- 
ing books quoted at the bar ; and forget- 
ting to return them, he would say of such 
borrowers, " Though backward in account- 
ing, they were well-practiced in book-keep- 

Book-thiev- ing." But deliberate book-thieving — what 
crime is there to compare with it in the 
estimation of the student and librarian } 
In Chambers' Journal there is an account 
of a memorable literary virtuoso who piqued 
himself upon his collection of scarce edi- 
tions and original manuscripts, most of 
which he had purloined from the libraries 
of others. He was always borrowing books 
of acquaintances with a resolution never to 
return them ; sending in a great hurry for 
a particular edition which he wanted to 

Subterfuges, consult for a moment, but when its return 
was solicited he was not at home ; or he 
had lent the book to somebody else ; or he 
could not lay his hand upon it just then ; 
or he had lost it ; or he had himself al- 
ready delivered it to the owner. Some- 
times he contented himself with stealing 



A Club of One 757 

one volume of a set, knowing where to pro- 
cure the rest for a trifle. After his death 
his library was sold at auction, and many 
of his defrauded friends had the pleasure 
of buying their own property back again Buyingtheir 
at an exorbitant price. Reading lately of VrtyoZk. 
book-titles, I was amused with a statement 
of how misleading many of them have 
been. The Diversions of Purley, at the Diversions 

r • , ,. . Ill of Purley. 

time of Its pubhcation, was ordered by a 
village book-club, under the impression 
that it was a book of amusing games. 
The Essay on Irish Bulls was another 
work which was thought by some folks to 
deal with live stock. The Ancient Mar- 
iner was sold largely to sea-faring men, 
who concluded from the name that it had 
some relation to nautical matters. The TheExcur- 
Excursion — expensive copies of it — were 
sold to tourists and to keepers of country 
inns and boarding-houses, as likely to be 
of especial interest to excursionists. James 
Smith used to dwell with much pleasure 
on the criticism of a Leicestershire clergy- 
man : " I do not see why they (the Ad- RejectedAd- 
dresses) should have been rejected : I think 
some of them very good." This, he would 
add, is almost as good as the avowal of the 
Irish bishop, that there were some good 



138 



A Club of One 



Tocqtte- 
ville^ s pref- 
erence. 



Sterne's 
tribute. 



How to 
read? 



things in Gulliver's Travels which he 
could not believe. Tocqueville preferred 
living with books to living with authors. 
One is not always happy with the latter ; 
while books are intelligent companions, 
without vanity, ill-humor, or caprice ; they 
do not want to talk of themselves, do not 
dislike to hear others praised ; clever peo- 
ple whom one can summon and dismiss 
just as one pleases. I often derive a pe- 
culiar satisfaction, says Sterne, in convers- 
ing with the ancient and modern dead, 
who yet live and speak excellently in their 
works. My neighbors think me often 
alone, and yet at such times I am in com- 
pany with more than five hundred mutes 
— each of whom, at my pleasure, commu- 
nicates his ideas to me by dumb signs, 
quite as intelligibly as any person living 
can do by the uttering of words. They al- 
ways keep the distance from me which I 
direct, and with a motion of my hand I can 
bring them as near to me as I please. I 
lay hands on fifty of them sometimes in an 
evening, and handle them as I like ; they 
never complain of ill-usage ; and when dis- 
missed from my presence, though ever so 
abruptly, take no offense. How to read .^ 
is a grave question to readers. Goethe 



A tier bury to 
Pope. 



A Club of One 759 

said he had been employed for eighteen 
years trying to learn the art, and had not 
attained it. Richter, speaking of miscella- 
neous reading, inquires, quaintly, " Does 
more depend on the order in which the 
meats follow each other or on the diges- 
tion of them ? " In 1 73 1, Atterbury wrote 
his last letter to Pope, and asks, *' How 
many books have come out of late in your 
parts which you think I should be glad to 
peruse ? Name them. The catalogue, I 
believe, will not cost you much trouble. 
They must be good ones indeed to chal- 
lenge any part of my time, now I have so 
little of it left. I, who squandered whole 
days heretofore, now husband hours when 
the glass begins to run low, and care not 
to spend them on trifles. At the end of 
the lottery of life our last minutes, like 
tickets left in the wheel, rise in their valu- 
ation." " Marvelous power of mind ! " ex- Aitexcia- 
claims Souvestre, reflecting on the value of 'smwstre. 
books in old age. " From a corner of my 
chamber — from the arm-chair which I oc- 
cupy — I can traverse the immense abysses 
of the past. I am present at the founda- 
tion of cities, the birth and growth of em- 
pires ; I accompany various races as they 
wander over the earth, establish them- 



i6o 



A Club of One 



Takes note 
of human- 
ity. 



Distances 
nothing. 



selves, and found nations ; I take note of 
that perpetual movement of humanity, as 
it seeks its level on the globe which has 
been given to it for an inheritance. Or, 
fatigued with these generalities, I repose 
in the tent of the patriarch Abraham, or 
beneath the oak of St. Louis. From the 
tribune of Cicero I pass to the pulpit of 
Bossuet ; distances are nothing to me ; I 
traverse them by an instantaneous bound, 
whether those of space or time. From the 
east I hasten to the west, from the early 
days of the world I pass on to the hour 
which has just struck ; wherever an at- 
tractive spectacle summons me, I am there 
in spirit ; or a noble action or an elevated 
conversation invites me, I am present to 
Magnificent applaud or take part. Magnificent empire 
memory ! of mcmory ! vast power and inexhaustible 
activity of thought ! I cease to be troubled 
now at my solitude and forced inaction." 



A strange 
dream, or 
vision. 



I had a strange dream last night — or 
vision rather. I record it as a curious 
freak or exercise of the faculties. The 
doctor must have put a little too much 
opium in his last powders. Methought my 
pretty round table in the library was en- 
larged to many times its real size. I was 



A Club of One i6i 

contemplating its polished surface, and 
wondering if any wood could be richer and 
more beautiful than our American black 
walnut, when a pill-box made its appear- a pui-box 
ance on the table, — rolling about in an ^pZralice. 
erratic way — describing all sorts of circles 
and semicircles, in the easiest and most ec- 
centric manner possible. It was a diminu- 
tive thing — the tiniest of the kind I had The tiniest 

T , of its k if id. 

ever seen — not greater m diameter than 
the smallest thimble. It was so small in- 
deed that a close eye was necessary to ob- 
serve its movements. Soon, another pill- 
box, a size larger, presented itself, and the 
two immediately began chasing each other 
in a very amusing manner — sometimes in 
straight lines and sometimes in graceful 
curves. Then another pill-box, a size big- 
ger than the last, made its appearance, and 
joined with the others in freakish gambols. 
A fourth next showed itself — still a little stmiarger, 
larger than the third — in a still more rol- 
licking humor than any of the rest, and it 
became very difficult indeed to watch them, 
so rapid and peculiar were their move- 
ments. Then another and another, each 
one a little bigger, till the table was pretty 
well filled with animated pill-boxes. There 
must have been as many as forty or fifty 



1 62 A Club of One 

Of every of them, — of cvery size and variety, from 
Tarieiy. the minute smallest to that of greatest 
proportions. No apothecary ever saw a 
greater array and intermixture. And each 
was marked with a cabalistic label, such as 
I had seen many a time in the handwriting 
of the numerous forgotten doctors my mul- 
tiplied diseases have baffled. The myste- 
rious characters inscribed on each would 
A shcdyfor havc bccn an interesting study to the ar- 
ogist, chaeologist. I wish I had a memorandum 

of them. The gravest of all my doctors 
would have laughed at their queerness, 
their variety, and their multiplicity. Away 
they all ran — the whole forty or fifty — 
in infinite variation — describing, it seemed 
Every fig- to mc, cvcry known figure in geometry, — 
ure^mgeom- ^'gi-'j^^^ ^^^ jj^ Combination. Sometimes I 

thought their movements described the 
orbits of the solar system better than any 
planetarium I had seen. Then in a long 
curved line they ranged themselves, — the 
first in the procession being the tiniest, 
and the last the most gigantic — as big as 
Gibbon's Gibbon's snuff-box that he tapped so grace- 
fully, and a pinch from which he always 
let fall at just the right moment to empha- 
size his story. In that long serpentine 
line how they did crawl about ; then wrig- 



snuff-box. 



A Club of One i6^ 

gled and twisted into all sorts of contor- 
tions and convolutions; then stretched 
themselves into something like order again. 
Their speed was interesting — their revo- j-^^^v ^^^ 
lutions, I mean. The big ones had stately ^"^''""• 
movements, like the great wheels of great 
engines. There was an expression of 
power in their slowness, and of apparent 
contempt for the little bustling fellows 
that had to be constantly hurrying to keep 
up. Then they were all mixed up — the 
little ones and the big ones together. B/^andm- 
They were so involved that I could not '^'''''-^''^'''^ 
tell one from another ; and the wonder 
was that there was no collision. Then 
they went leaping and leaping, till it ap- 
peared there must be a universal smash. 
I trembled for the consequences. Then 
the tops or coverings came off, and mingled 
miscellaneously with the other parts, show- 
ing fresh vigor in the chase, as so many 
fresh foxes. The boxes that had contained 
so many incompatibles fused together in incompati- 

, .,.,_,. bles together. 

close companionship. The opium was not 
at all disgusted with the lobelia. The jalap 
and the pleasantest of all soothing rem- 
edies affiliated, as if they had been friends 
since Galen. Then they ranged them- 
selves again into long serpentine lines — 



1 64 



A Club of One 



Playing at 
leap-frog. 



Dance of 
the Pill- 
Boxes. 



the boxes and the lids separate. After al- 
ternate slow and rapid movements, they 
began playing at leap-frog — the smallest 
being vaulted by the next in size, until the 
whole lines were changed — the most dimin- 
utive bringing up the rear, and the largest 
leading the column. And so they went on 
with their varied and indescribable gyra- 
tions and convolutions ; when, suddenly 
leaping into one another, they nested them- 
selves snugly together ; then as quickly 
and mysteriously disappeared, and the re- 
markable scene was ended. No Roman 
emperor in the Flavian amphitheatre was 
ever better entertained. I call it The 
Dance of the Pill-Boxes. 



Talks of 
books exchi- 
sively. 



By appointment, the doctor spent a 
couple of hours with me last night in my 
library. I had anticipated his visit in 
every way that I could, and was glad to 
see him. The place was cheerfully illumi- 
nated, and the wine was the best that my 
cellar afforded. I was pleased to see that 
he was disposed to be attentive and recep- 
tive, as my purpose was to talk to him of 
books exclusively, with a view to enlight- 
ening him as to some of the best, and to 
show him what a comparatively small sum 



A Club of One i6^ 

of money would put him in possession 
of them. For, time and again, he has 
lamented to me his lack of intelligence on 
the subject, as well as of the requisite cash 
to buy, even though he knew what books he 
should purchase. To convince him that a To convince 
good proportion of the famous books that ^ ''^'^* 
have been produced could be put into a 
small space, and that not a very large 
amount of money would be necessary to 
purchase them, I caused two hundred or 
more volumes to be placed together in one contents of 
case with seven shelves, each of four feet °"'^'^''^^' 
in length, that he might be convinced by 
seeing, as well as by my didactic instruc- 
tion. To have the whole before us as a 
sort of object-lesson, our easy chairs were 
so placed that we could view the collection 
to the best advantage. The first shelf Thefirst 
(the lowest) was just filled with the Bible, 
in four volumes (Samuel Bagster & Sons, 
London) ; Webster's Unabridged Diction- 
ary ; Anthon's Classical Dictionary ; and 
Appleton's Cyclopaedia, i6 volumes ; (22 
volumes in all). The second shelf was Thesecojtd 
filled with octavos (some of them of two 
and more volumes) of Shakespeare, Bacon, 
Milton, Homer, Dante, Virgil, Faust, 
Chambers' Encyclopcedia of English Liter- 



1 66 A Club of One 

ature (London and Edinburgh) ; and Bry- 
ant's Library of Poetry and Song. These 
Goodedi- are all good editions, well printed, and ap- 

tions. . ^ . . ,- . „,, 

propriately (as I said) m octavo. Ihe 
other five shelves contained the following, 
— named in the order in which the books 
happened to be placed, and not according 
to preference. They are in crown octavo, 
i2mo, and i6mo — a very few of the lat- 
ter — only such as could not be conven- 
iently purchased of a larger size. Plato's 
Republic and Phaedo, 2 volumes (from 
Bohn's Standard Library). Emerson's 
A beautiful Prose Works, 2 volumes. Montaigne's 
Montaig7ie. Essays, 4 volumcs (the beautiful Riverside 
edition — exquisite letter-press — the proof- 
sheets of the perfect pages having been 
read by Mr. H. O. Houghton himself, long 
before he attained the head of the pub- 
lishing house of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin 
& Company). Swift's Works, 6 volumes. 
Goldsmith's works, 4 volumes. Seneca's 
Morals (London, 1702). Carlyle's Essays, 
Sartor Resartus, and French Revolution, 
Ha-w- 6 volumes. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter 

J^Srpiece. (his mastcrpiecc). Holmes's Autocrat, and 
Elsie Venner, 2 volumes (the cream of his 
genius.) Curtis's Prue and I (a little vol- 
ume of exquisite sketches). Uncle Tom's 



A Club of One i6y 

Cabin. Souvestre's Attic Philosopher, and 
Leaves from a P'amily Journal, 2 volumes 
(suited to serene moods). De Quincey's 
Opium Eater. Sydney Smith (a volume 
of selections, including the Peter Plymley 
Letters). Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianas Omvobime 
(a volume made up from the five original fromfive. 
volumes, containing most that is best and 
of general interest). Miss Austen's Pride 
and Prejudice. Arabian Nights. Lamb's 
Essays, and Talfourd's Life and Letters, 
3 volumes. Pascal's Thoughts. Epictetus 
(a beautiful edition, Little, Brown & Com- 
pany). La Rochefoucauld's Maxims (Wil- 
liam Gowans, Nassau Street, — that \\i- Aninterest- 
terestmg bibiiopolist, known to so many poUst. 
book-lovers : I could gossip about him for 
an hour). Irving's Sketch-Book, Knick- 
erbocker's History of New York, and Life 
of Goldsmith, 3 volumes (his complete 
works would fill a whole shelf). Foster's 
Essays. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. 
Mill on Liberty. Gil Bias. Burns (with 
marginal glossary, John S. Marr & Sons, 
Glasgow, — the most convenient edition a 



conven- 



of Burns for English readers that I know). 'o/Burm!^ 
Godwin's Caleb Williams. Junius's Let- 
ters. Crabb Robinson's Diary. Tragedies 
of ^schylus. Butler's Hudibras. Bun- 



i68 A Club of One 

yan's Pilgrim's Progress. Cicero's Offices, 
etc. (a single volume from Bohn's). Hol- 
bein's Dance of Death. Macaulay's Es- 
says, 6 volumes. Dana's Two Years Before 
the Mast. Darwin's Voyage. Selections 

Landorre- from Savage Landor, by Hillard. (A rich 
little book.) Boswell's Johnson, 4 vol- 
umes. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
3 volumes. (It would not do to be without 
Burton.) Reveries of a Bachelor. (This 

Books that is another of those little books that have 
flavor, and must live.) Disraeli's Curiosi- 
ties of Literature, 4 volumes. Sir Thomas 
Browne (Religio Medici, A Letter to a 
Friend, Christian Morals, and Urn Burial, 
in one attractive volume, imprint, Ticknor 
& Fields). Fenelon (a selection from his 
writings, Munroe & Company, Boston and 
Cambridge). Robinson Crusoe. Wilhelm 
Meister. Dickens's Pickwick Papers, Da- 
vid Copperfield, and Tale of Two Cities, 3 
volumes. (His humor, his pathos, and his 

Dickens's powcr arc best displayed in these three 

"^^feZ' masterpieces.) Letters of Madame de Se- 
vigne. Letters of Lady Mary Wort- 
ley Montagu. Rasselas. Walton's Angler. 
White's History of Selborne. Thoreau's 
Walden. Charles O'Malley. Of the Imi- 
tation of Christ. Fielding's Tom Jones 



A Club of One 169 

and Humphry Clinker, 2 volumes. Pic- 
ciola. Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and 
Holy Dying, 2 volumes. Book of Scottish a ^ood book 
Songs (a volume of the Illustrated London sorigs. 
Library, — an admirable collection, and a 
beautiful book). Thomas Fuller's Holy 
and Profane States, and Good Thoughts in 
Bad Times, 2 volumes (selections from the 
works of the old worthy). Confucius, and 
the Chinese Classics. Froude's Short 
Studies on Great Subjects (the volume con- Fronde's ar- 
taining the article on the Book of Job). Book of job. 
Vanity Fair and The Newcomes. Cooper's 
Spy. Balzac's Petty Annoyances of Mar- 
ried Life (one of the most amusing and 
acute books in literature, whatever may be 
thought of its tone and spirit). Rabelais. 
Ecce Homo. (Why has the Professor 
never published the promised companion 
volume 1) Spence's Anecdotes. Vathek. 
Lewis's Monk (a queer, crazy old copy, 
printed on different fonts of type, and con- 
taining pictures of the veritable devils). Sel- 
den's Table Talk. Johnson's Lives of the 
English Poets, 2 volumes (to get the Life 
of Savage : why don't some publisher print a suggestion 
it separately ?) Aristotle's Ethics. Lu- "^'^ 
ther's Table Talk. Hazlitt's Round Table 
volume (containing Conversations of North- 



lyo A Club of One 

cote). Life of John Brown of Ossawat- 
tomie. Montesquieu, 4 volumes. Don 
Quixote. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. 
Kinglake's Eothen. Jerrold's Mrs. Cau- 
dle's Curtain Lectures, and Chronicles of 
Clovernook, 2 volumes. Evelyn's Diary. 
A beatitifui Pepys' Diary. The Spectator, 8 volumes 
sjeaatV.'' (a beautiful edition, Little, Brown & Com- 
pany). Southey's Wesley, Nelson, and The 
Doctor, 3 volumes. Machiavelli's Prince. 
Plutarch's Lives, 4 volumes. Plutarch's 
Morals, 4 volumes. Meditations of the 
Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Lon- 
don, 1708). La Bruyere's Characters (Lon- 
don, 1702). Erasmus's Praise of Folly, 
and Colloquies, 2 volumes (London, 171 1. 
These authors should be read in old edi- 
Biozvin^the tlous. It Is Hkc blowlug dust off vellum). 
lum ^^ Coleridge's Table Talk. Sir Thomas More's 
Utopia. (How the figments of his imagi- 
nation have been realized in the later life 
of the race ! Original thinking seems like 
commonplace.) Scott's Old Mortality, 
Ivanhoe, and Guy Mannering. (These 
three embody the magician's genius, and 
save space and money.) Bulwer's My 
Novel. Reynard the Fox. Lover's Le- 
The story gcuds and Storics of Ireland (to get the 
"o-'RZrdon. story of Barny O'Reirdon). Joubert's 



A Club of One lyi 

Thoughts. Parton's Voltaire, 2 volumes. 
Manzoni's Betrothed Lovers. John Wool- 
man's Journal. Paul and Virginia ("the 
swan-song of old dying France"). Alger's 
Oriental Poetry. Sterne's Works, 4 vol- 
umes. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 2 
volumes. (A work that is destined, as 
Swift would say, to " go down the gutter 
of time," for its boldness and originality, 
notwithstanding its burning by the Middle- 
sex grand jury.) And lastly (deserving to Theiast,b»t 
be mentioned amongst the first) Xeno- S/ 
phon's Memorabilia of Socrates. In all, 
something like 220 volumes. As to cost, 
I once saw a rich Californian pay as much 
for sets of Irving and Cooper in tree calf 
as would have bought the whole collection, 
including a respectable case to put it in. 
My friend the doctor wears a stone in his 
shirt-front, which makes him ridiculous 
with sensible people, and excites the cupid- 
ity of every ruffian that meets him, that 
would buy the whole precious collection 
twice over. I believe I shall call it My ''MyCrmd^ 
Grindstone Library. What mind would trary:' 
not be sharpened by consulting it } And 
vwhere, pray, would one begin to weed } I 
think I shall have an artisan inscribe the 
significant name at the top, just under the 



1J2 A Club of One 

moulding. It is not likely that many ap- 
plications will be made to borrow from it. 

AQunkerof One of my best friends is an old-time 

man type. Quaker, of the John Woolman type, which 
is rapidly disappearing. He is an excellent 
man, and a call from him always refreshes 
me. He carries an atmosphere of peace 
and good-will with him. He is an honest 
man. He is what he seems to be, and 
seems to be what he is. No wonder that 
such men, under the leadership of George 

George Fox. Fox, should havc disturbed the compla- 
cency of conformists in England. Macau- 
lay describes the tempest of derision the 
sturdy shoemaker raised by declaring that 
it was a violation of Christian sincerity to 
designate a single person by a plural pro- 
noun, and that it was an idolatrous homage 
to Janus and Woden to talk about January 
and Wednesday. Teufelsdrockh, in Sartor, 
pronounces the most remarkable incident 
in modern history, not the Diet of Worms, 
still less the battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, 
Peterloo, or any other battle, but George 

Making to Fox's making to himself a suit of leather. 

suitZf'^ "■ Sitting in his stall ; working on tanned 
hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, 
swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rub- 



A Club of One ly^ 

bish, this man had nevertheless a living 
spirit belonging to him." It is very evident 
that Macaulay had anything but a warm Macauiay. 
side for the sect that by its zeal and direct- 
ness and courage had done so much toward 
turning all that had been considered estab- 
lished upside down. Southey, too, never let 
an opportunity pass without hitting the rev- 
olutionary peace sect a blow. And Cole- 
ridge — how merciless! — as exhibited in a 
passage in his Table Talk. He is speaking 
of modern Quakerism, be it remembered 
— unlike the original type, exemplified by 
my worthy and amiable friend. *' Modern Coieridge 

•' -^ quoted. 

Quakerism," he says, " is like one of those 
gigantic trees which are seen in the forests 
of North America — apparently flourishing, 
and preserving all its greatest stretch and 
spread of branches ; but when you cut 
through an enormously thick and gnarled 
bark, you find the whole inside hollow and 
rotten. Modern Quakerism, like such a 
tree, stands upright by help of its inveter- 
ate bark alone. Bark a Quaker, and he is 
a poor creature." One of the most distin- 
guished ministers of the Society of Friends 
in America at an early day thought it verycuH- 
necessary, when speaking in his Journal of 
a morning walk outside Geneva (where he 



1^4 ^ Club of One 

was tarrying in the interest of his society), 
to apologize for taking a look at Geneva 
Lake and the mountains. " I walked," he 
says, " out of the city (Geneva) and viewed 

Asceticism, thc Alps and the lake ; this I did for the 
sake of the walk." The peculiar style of 
the sect — more in vogue a few years ago 
than now — is shown in the letter — pro- 
nounced to be authentic : " Friend John : I 
desire thee to be so kind as to go to one of 
^those sinful men in the flesh called an at- 
torney, and let him take out an instrument, 
with a seal fixed thereto ; by means where- 

" The Old- of we may seize the outward tabernacle of 

naciey Gcorge Green, and bring him before the 
lambskin men at Westminster, and teach 
him to do as he would be done by : and 
so I rest thy friend in the light. M. G." 
Their sermons, too, were sometimes very 
peculiar and concise, though their meetings 
were apt to be silent. On one occasion, 
when a large audience was assembled, the 
only words spoken were by a lady — very 

A short ser- deliberately : ** Help yourselves, and your 
friends will like you the better." I have 
heard my mother say that she once went 
several miles, on horseback with her two 
boys, to a Quaker meeting in the woods, 
and that the remarkable sermon preached at 



A Club of One ly^ 

the time (by a lady too) had made such an 
impression upon her that she could never 
forget it. It also was delivered in a very 
measured, deliberate manner, and did not 
disturb in the least the stillness, serenity, 
and solemnity of the meeting : '' Beware of Another stui 
puff^dupness ! " Its brevity and conciseness "^ '"^ ^^' 
made it memorable ; and my mother often 
repeated it with effect when her half-dozen 
self-conceited boys were most intolerableo 
The early hostility of the sect to music 
was a part of their religion, and was very 
decided. When Jenny Lind appeared in a jenny Lind. 
Western city in 185 1, and a limited number 
of the society in a neighboring town had 
announced their intention of hearing the 
" Nightingale," the conscientious " head of 
the meeting" "felt a concern" to arise in 
fourth day (Wednesday) meeting and ad- 
monish his hearers that there was a ''for- 
eign girl named Jane Lynde trapesing up 
and down the land whose voice was said to 
provoke the birds to sing, and he would warn Provoking 

. , , , . , . , the birds to 

especially the young of the meetmg to be- ««^. 
ware the wiles of all such worldly persons." 
One John M., a Friend of like strictness, 
was shocked to learn that his son-in-law, 
Jonathan T., who kept a country store in a 
village some miles away, was selling musical 



iy6 A Club of One 

instruments. The venerable good man, 
after a night of prayers and tears, deter- 
Breaking mined to visit his son-in-law, and break up 
taffic!^""^ the sinful traffic. Arriving in front of his 
son-in-law's store, he called him into the 
street — refusing peremptorily to go in, till 
the object of his visit was accomplished. 
"Jonathan ! " sternly spake John, " I hear 
thee keeps musical instruments for sale ; 
does thee .?" *'A few; but"— The zeal- 
ous John — interrupting — demanded that 
they be produced at once, to be destroyed 
— promising to refund whatever they had 
cost. They were accordingly brought out, 
and in the presence of the interested 
With the crowd in the street — with the manner of a 
'propiZl/"' prophet of Israel destroying the images of 
Baal — he proceeded violently to tear out 
their tongues. They were jews-harps ! 

It is recorded that some one at a dinner- 
table in England remarked that Landseer 
must have been once a dog himself, as he 
Landseer's could scc hls rcsemblancc to one ; remark- 

resemblnnce . . . ,,...,, 

to a dog. mg at the same time upon the distmguished 
painter's arrogant manner, love of contra- 
diction, and despotic judgment. I have 
myself remarked the resemblance referred 
to in some of the portraits of the great 



A Club of One lyj 

man ; and thought how natural that he 
should have painted his canine friends so 
perfectly. Charles Darwin's resemblance Darwin's 

, . . , ^ , likeness to a 

to a monkey is certamly very marked : one mofikey. 
engraving I have seen of him makes him 
the very image of a well-known species of 
ape. His long and peculiar investigations 
may have had the effect to develop the 
likeness in him, latent perhaps in us all. 
For three generations we know that the 
Darwins were engaged in much the same 
line of study. Erasmus, the grandfather of 
Charles, must have been deep in " species " 
questions, for he had inscribed upon a seal 
which he used the significant words, "om- 
nia ex conchis " — all from oysters. Per- "Aii/rom 
haps there never existed a more honest ''^^^^^' 
investigator than Charles Darwin, and it 
is impossible to estimate the effect of his 
investigations upon society and thought. 
The new civilization of Japan seems to a 
great extent to have accepted his conclu- 
sions and teachings, along with those of 
kindred contemporary scientists and phi- 
losophers ; and it is said that many of the 
most enlightened of that strange people 
are interested in them above everything 
else — even above Christianity itself. 
Whatever men may think of Darwin's 



A remark- 



iy8 A Club of One 

facts and philosophy, they must admire his 
industry, his enthusiasm, and, above all, 
his candor. He even went so far as to 

^/'wtr' make a list of thirty-four authors and 
works in which he finds his theory of evo- 
lution more or less distinctly foreshadowed. 
As to his conclusions, always so guardedly 
expressed, what close observer has not 
time and again been led to suspect the pos- 
sible truth of them .? Once I took an in- 
telligent monkey by the hand (extended to 
me at the request of the keeper), and look- 
ing him in the face, I found it impossible 

A feeling of to rcpress a certain feeling of brotherhood. 
Its little palm felt like the shriveled hand 
of an infant, and its eyes had a look of 
comprehension and affinity. I shall never 
forget the sensation that came over me on 
the occasion. Important events, a hundred 
of them, have occurred to me since that 
time, and been forgotten, but that leave- 
taking with the poor performing man-ani- 
mal is as fresh as any event of yesterday. 

Hawthorne Hawthomc, after observing a sick monkey 

book. in the Zoological Gardens in London, went 

home and wrote in his note-book, " In a 
future state of being, I think it will be one 
of my inquiries, in reference to the mys- 
teries of the present state, why monkeys 



A Club of One ijg 

were made. The Creator could not surely 
have meant to ridicule his own work. It 
might rather be fancied that Satan had 
perpetrated monkeys, with a malicious 
purpose of parodying the masterpiece of 
creation." Swift must have been struck sivi/t in 
m some such way, or we should not have 
had the remarkable passage in Gulliver, 
relating to the conduct of the gigantic 
monkey in Brobdingnag — as big as an ele- 
phant — which seized the famous traveler 
in his bed-room, and carried him to the 
top of an out-house, sixty feet high, where 
the monster was seen by hundreds in the 
court, sitting upon the ridge of the build- 
ing, holding Gulliver like a baby in one of Gtiiiwer in 
his fore-paws, and feeding him with the "moilkey't 

1 , . . 1 . , fore-paws- 

Other, by crammmg mto his mouth some 
victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on 
one side of his chaps, and patting him 
when he would not eat. Wilkie Collins 
must have been impressed with the appar- 
ent close relationship existing between man 
and monkey or he could never have had 
his hero, Count Fosco (a great creation), cotmtFosco. 
do as he did with the organ-grinder in the 
story. Fosco stopped at a pastry-cook's, 
went in (probably to give an order), and 
came out immediately with a tart in his 



i8o 



A Club of One 



The counfs 
pre/ererice. 



Voltaire. 



The king's 
monkey. 



hand. An Italian was grinding an organ 
before the shop, and a miserable little 
shriveled monkey was sitting on the in- 
strument. The count stopped, bit a piece 
for himself out of the tart, and gravely 
handed the rest to the monkey. " My 
poor little man ! " he said, with grotesque 
tenderness, " you look hungry. In the 
sacred name of humanity, I offer you some 
lunch ! " The organ-grinder piteously put 
in his claim to a penny from the benev- 
olent stranger. The count shrugged his 
shoulders contemptuously, and passed on. 
When Frederick the Great made short ex- 
cursions he was in the habit of carrying 
Voltaire with him. In one of these Vol- 
taire was alone in a post-chaise which fol- 
lowed the king's carriage. A young page, 
whom Voltaire had some days previous 
caused to be severely scolded, resolved to 
have revenge ; accordingly, when he went 
before to cause the horses to be prepared, 
he told all the postmasters and postillions 
that the king had an old monkey, of which 
he was so fond, that he delighted in dress- 
ing him up like a person belonging to the 
court, and that he always made this ani- 
mal accompany him in his little excursions ; 
that the monkey cared for no one but the 



A Club of One i8i 

king, and was extremely mischievous ; and 
that, therefore, if he attempted to get out 
of the chaise, they were to prevent him. 
After receiving this notice, all the ser- Howtheser- 
vants of the different post-houses, when- hiilu"^ 
ever Voltaire attempted to get out of the 
carriage, opposed his exit, and when he 
thrust out his hand to open the carriage- 
door, he always received two or three sharp 
blows with a stick upon it, accompanied 
with shouts of laughter. Voltaire, who did 
not understand a word of German, could 
not demand the least explanation of these Noexphuia- 
singular proceedings ; his fury became ex- 
treme, but it only served to redouble the 
gayety of the postmasters ; and a large 
crowd constantly assembled in consequence 
of the page's report, to see the king's 
monkey, and to hoot him. Throughout 
the journey, things passed off in this fash- 
ion ; but what completed the anger and 
vexation of Voltaire was, that the king 
thought the trick so pleasant, that he re- 
fused to punish the inventor of it. This 
story is set down in Madame de Genlis' Motikeysas 
Memoirs. Monkeys form an article of ■^'""^' 
food throughout tropical America, and the 
difference between feeding upon them and 
man-eating, to the susceptible traveler, is 



i82 A Club of One 

not very apparent. The meat is tough, 
and keeps longer than any other in that 
climate. They boil it with unripe papaws 
to make it tender. The Indians told Gib- 

rhe tail the bou that "the tail is the most delicate part 

jo^t^deiicate ^^^^^ thc hair is properly singed." In 
Japan, monkey meat is prepared in a chaf- 
ing-dish with onions and sweet sauce. A 
traveler in that country says he found it 
tender, but almost tasteless. At one inn 
he saw the freshly severed head of a very 
large monkey hung to the chain supporting 
an iron pot for cooking. It was ghastly, 

Painfully grim, and pallid, painfully human in color 
and expression, and the dead face seemed 
to change in the rising smoke. He had 
no desire to taste monkey after that. In- 
stances of imitativeness in monkeys are 
sometimes curiously suggestive of human- 
ity. In the following instance the conse- 
quences were disastrous. It is a story of 
a monkey brought home by a sailor to his 

A household wife. The animal got to be a household 

pet. 

pet, and was always about the kitchen 
when the woman was at work. The yard 
was full of chickens, and every now and 
then they would come into the room to 
pick up crumbs. Whenever they became 
too much of a nuisance, the good woman 



A Club of One i8^ 

would throw a few grains of powder in the 
fire to frighten them out with the flash. 
One day the sailor's wife was away, and 
the monkey undertook to manage the 
kitchen. He watched the chickens very His conduct. 
carefully, and when the kitchen was pretty 
well filled with them, he took down the 
powder-horn and threw it all in the fire, 
blowing himself and everything sky high. 
I once saw a swinging monkey in a zoolog- 
ical garden who seemed to consider and 
estimate the angles and distances with as 
much apparent accuracy and skill as the skuio/a 
greatest expert in a gymnasium. He never ^monlly^ 
missed his purpose a single time, and his 
aims were as varied as they were interest- 
ing. Lord Sandwich trained up a huge 
baboon that he was fond of to play the 
part of a clergyman, dressed in canonicals, 
and make some buffoon imitation of saying 
grace. One of the species of baboon called 
the mandrill, was well known in London 
some years ago. He was called " Happy ^^^^ 
Jerry." He was excessively fond of gin ^^^^■^* 
and water, and of tobacco. An ape, one of 
the gibbons, produces an exact octave of 
musical sounds : ascending and descending 
the scale by half-notes, so that this mon- 
key '* alone of brute mammals may be said 



184 



A Cluh of One 



A minute 
tail. 



to sing." Various kinds of monkeys make 
laughing or tittering sounds when pleased. 
ivhenmnck Thc face of one species at least, when much 
enraged, grows red. Mr. Sutton carefully 
observed for Darwin a young orang and 
chimpanzee, and he found that both always 
closed their eyes in sneezing and coughing. 
Keepers of monkeys in zoological gardens 
say that a common disease with them is 
softening of the brain. Many of the pe- 
culiar diseases of the females are the same 
as in the human species of the same sex. 
A writer in Nature says that in the human 
skeleton a minute tail is to be seen, though 
none is visible in the unmutilated adult 
body. In the earliest stages of our exist- 
ence, however, there is for a short time 
a real tail of considerable relative extent, 
but in the development of the body it 
becomes stationary, so as rapidly to be- 
come altogether overshadowed and hidden. 
*' Many years ago (says Darwin) in the Zo- 
ological Gardens, I placed a looking-glass 
on the floor before two young orangs, who, 
as far as it was known, had never before 
seen one. At first they gazed at their 
own images, with the most steady surprise, 
and often changed their point of view. 
They then approached close, and protruded 



Two young 
oransrs. 



A Club of One i8^ 

their lips towards the image, as if to kiss 
it, in exactly the same manner as they 
had previously done towards each other, 
when first placed, a few days before, in 
the same room. They next made all sorts ah sorts of 
of grimaces, and put themselves in various ^''''^^^'• 
attitudes before the mirror ; they pressed 
and rubbed the surface ; they placed their 
hands at different distances behind it ; and 
finally seemed almost frightened, started 
a little, became cross, and refused to look 
any longer." When Dr. Duchesne gave to 
a monkey some new article of food, it ele- Elevated it$ 
vated its eyebrows a little, thus assuming ^y^^^""^^- 
an appearance of close attention. It then 
took the food in its fingers, and, with low- 
ered or rectilinear eyebrows, scratched, 
smelt, and examined it, — an expression 
of reflection being thus exhibited. Some- 
times it would throw back its head a little, 
and again with suddenly raised eyebrows 
reexamine and finally taste the food. But 
more remarkable than all is the seeming 
consciousness of evil, and apparent instinct instinct of 
of Satan, that these very human animals, 
under certain circumstances, seem to ex- 
hibit. Turtles and serpents are sometimes 
put into the cells of the poor captives. 
They do not much care for the turtles, but 
the snakes are the very devil. 



i86 A Club of One 

As I walked up and down my library 
to-day, stopping occasionally to turn over 
musingly some old well-worn volumes, I 
could not help wondering if the time spent 
Certain so- upou Certain so-called sciences was not 
Tjwlt^"' about all lost. Like every other young 
man of studious habits, I thought I must 
know the mind, and so I read metaphysics. 
I read Locke, until my brain was weary, 
trying to comprehend his theory of ''in- 
Depressed. natc idcas." I was depressed, — feeling 
acutely that my failure to comprehend him 
was on account of my own mental inabil- 
ity. I read Dugald Stewart ; and though 
delighted with his didactic eloquence, I did 
not understand his system as I thought I 
should. I read Sir William Hamilton : the 
result was the same. I was discouraged 
— especially with my own estimate of my- 
self. Sometimes I lamented that I had 
read these books at all ; but never could 
tell why, till, years after, I met with the 
^^i'w^wii^/ judgment of Thomas Carlyle, which per- 
cariyie. fg^tly rcstcd my uneasy mind. "This 
study of metaphysics, I say, had only the 
result, after bringing me rapidly through 
different phases of opinion, at last to de- 
j^o right be- liver me altogether out of metaphysics. I 
SSJf"^ found it altogether a frothy system, no 



A Club of One i8y 

right beginning to it, no right ending. I 
began with Hume and Diderot, and as 
long as I was with them I ran at atheism, 
at blackness, at materialism of all kinds. 
If I read Kant I arrived at precisely op- Kant. 
posite conclusions, that all the world was 
spirit, namely, that there was nothing ma- 
terial at all anywhere ; and the result was 
what I have stated, that I resolved for my 
part on having nothing more to do with 
metaphysics at all." I thought, too, with 
all other studious boys and young men, 
that I must become acquainted with what 
Archbishop Whately called ''catallactics, cataiiac- 
or the science of exchanges " (political 
economy). I read Smith, and Malthus, 
and Ricardo, and others ; and as I pro- 
gressed the less I knew, or the more I 
became lost in the endless complication of 
conflicting calculations and theories. All 
the time vaguely suspecting — not having 
the courage or ability to conclude, with De 
Quincey — that "nothing could be postu- 
lated, nothing demonstrated, for anarchy Nothing de- 
as to first prmciples was predommant. 
And I was never quite at ease with my- 
self on the subject till I encountered Dan- Webster's 
iel Webster's dictum as to the so-called 
science, very clearly expressed in a letter 



i88 A Club of One 

to a friend : " For my part," says the 
great lawyer, and statesman, and profound 
thinker, *' though I like the investigation 
of particular questions, I give up what is 
called the science of political economy. 
Not a set- There is no such science. There are no 
^^^' rules on these subjects so fixed and in- 

variable that their aggregate constitutes 
a science. I believe I have recently run 
over twenty volumes, from Adam Smith 
to Professor Dew ; and from the whole, if 
I were to pick out with one hand all mere 
truisms, and with the other all the doubt- 
ful propositions, little would be left." 

Lord, have Lord, havc mercy upon me, a miserable 
^^^^' sinner. In my wretched physical and 
moral state, I like to think upon the pos- 
sible good man, as I find him outlined in 
George Herbert, Goldsmith, and others, to 
say nothing of the New Testament. I like 
to think of that pleasant Sunday morn- 
ing, when I heard the good Episcopalian, 
Dr. Muhlenberg, preach a sermon in Dr. 
Adams's Presbyterian church, in behalf of a 
Christian Lutheran mission. The theme was Chris- 

chartty. 

tian charity. And the spirit of the Teacher 
was in every word. Once or twice he lost 
his place from (it appeared to me) pure ex- 



A Club of One 189 

altation of feeling — being lifted up out of 
himself into a higher medium. Rapt, trans- 
ported, for the moment, his countenance 
showed him to be. The heaven of his 
hopes, and the heaven of the hopes of all. The heaven 
he was in a sense already enjoying. The ^-^''^^• 
smile of the Lord was the feast of his soul. 
The difficulty of finding his place again, 
seemed only to be the difficulty of readjust- 
ment. The good man ! And many and 
many good men there are, though not so 
conspicuous. The bigot's calculation, that TJiebigofs 

. 1 1 T • . • r .1 calculation. 

nme hundred and ninety-nme 01 every thou- 
sand souls are predestined to be lost, is not 
the calculation of the possessor of a human 
heart which knows itself, or feels at all a 
tithe of the irremediable that lies about it. 
A right-minded man has some conscious- 
ness of human weakness and of the difficulty 
of the human lot — neither of which exist- 
ent verities should for a moment be lost 
sight of while considering any system of 
philosophy, government, or religion espe- 
cially. Religion is for men, as government Religion. 
and philosophy are ; and as men cannot 
violently be made over, they must be taken 
as they exist. Any system must fail that 
requires the impossible. A true Christian 
Church has been defined to be an associa- 



igo 



A Cliih of One 



Christian.' 
ity. 



tion of men for the cultivation of knowl- 
edge, the practice of piety, and the promo- 

Theoiogy. tion of virtue. The temple of theology is 
ever crumbling. Extremes and nice dis- 
tinctions in faith are being more and more 
forgotten or subordinated ; and while a 
common basis is being discovered, it is felt 
to be wise by the sects to *' press differ- 
ences tenderly. Religion is too essential 
to cling to any dogma." It is the amalgam 
of Christianity that is destined to fuse the 
churches. The elements are slowly prepar- 
ing, to be inevitably compounded. There 
are encouraging signs. A recent traveler 
in Europe speaks of visiting an immense 
brown church in Heidelberg, with imposing 
steeple, and statues in the niches on the 
walls, which he supposed to be a Catholic 
cathedral. On entering he observed that 
it was divided in two parts by a wall in the 
centre, and discovered that one end of the 
church was Catholic, and the other end 
Lutheran, both worshiping under one roof. 

imagijteiti Imagine an American village of five thou- 
sand souls, with a dozen or more sects of 
Christians, all worshiping together in one 
temple. How soon the different sects would 
become ashamed of their petty differences, 
and what a power such a compound organ- 



A Club of One igi 

ization would become. It would soon be 
an influence from the centre to the ends of 
the earth. As it is, the different sects — 
all claiming a common purpose — find it 
impossible to hold a few meetings together 
without bickering. How the devil laughs The devu 
at all such proceedings, and rejoices at "'^^ ^' 
every new device to divide his enemies. 
Whenever in any religious faith, dark or 
bright (says a recent writer), we allow our 
minds to dwell upon the points in which 
we differ from other people, we are wrong, 
and in the devil's power. This is the es- 
sence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving — The Pkari- 
" Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other 'X'/n^^""^'' 
men are." At every moment of our lives 
we should be trying to find out, not in what 
we differ with other people, but in what we 
agree with them ; and the moment we can 
agree as to anything that should be done, 
kind or good (and who but fools could n't ?) 
then do it ; push at it together ; you can't 
quarrel in a side-by-side push ; but the mo- 
ment that even the best men stop pushing, 
and begin talking, they mistake their pug- f^'^^^'l"^-^ 
nacity for piety, and it 's all over. Chris- M piety. 
tianity, said Warburton to Spence, seems 
to have received more hurt from its friends 
than its enemies. By their making things 



192 



A Club of One 



Moral whet- 
stones. 



Special be- 
liefs. 



Gloomy the- 
ologies. 



part of it, which are not so ; or talking of 
things as very material to it, which are 
very little so. The sects discuss one an^- 
other somewhat as they use whetstones, 
Coleridge said, to sharpen their moral dis- 
crimination and consciences. But the bat- 
tle-cries of Sobieski and Ibrahim are not 
for this day. All the world knows with 
Swift, that you may force men, by interest 
or punishment, to say or swear they be- 
lieve, and to act as if they believed : you 
can go no further. Beliefs, therefore, are 
less and less regarded, in comparison with 
Christianity itself. Men, it has been said, 
may be tattooed with their special beliefs 
like so many South-Sea Islanders ; but a 
real human heart with Divine love in it, 
beats with the same glow under all the pat- 
terns of all earth's thousand tribes. " 'T is 
not the dying for a faith that 's so hard. 
Master Harry," said the trooper [Dick 
Steele], ** 't is the living up to it that is dif- 
ficult." Ah ! what mighty intellects have 
been employed in the world to divide it, in 
matters of religious faith, and what multi- 
tudes of lives have been sacrificed to keep 
it divided ! When the gloomy and awful 
theologies become curiosities, how prodig- 
ious will the intellects of their inventors 



A Club of One ig^ 

appear ! Robert Hall pronounced Jona- 
than Edwards the greatest of the sons of 
men. ''That he was a man of extraor- 
dinary endowments (remarks Dr. Holmes, 
in his defense of the doctors against the 
clergy) and of deep spiritual nature, was not 
questioned, nor that he was a most acute 
reasoner who could unfold a proposition 
into its consequences as patiently, as con- 
vincingly, as a palaeontologist extorts its 
confession from a fossil fragment. But it 
was maintained that so many dehumaniz- 
ing ideas were mixed up with his concep- 
tions of man, and so many diabolizing at- DiaboUzing 
tributes embodied in his imagination of ''^^'^'^''^''■ 
the Deity, that his system of beliefs was 
tainted throughout by them, and that the 
fact of his being so remarkable a logician 
recoiled on the premises which pointed his 
inexorable syllogisms to such revolting 
conclusions. When he presents us a God, 
in whose sight children, with certain not 
too frequent exceptions, ' are young vipers, 
and are infinitely more hateful than vi- 
pers '; when he gives the most frightful 
detailed description of infinite and endless Endless tor- 
tortures which it drives men and women 
mad to think of, prepared for ' the bulk of 
mankind '; when he cruelly pictures a fu- 



A burden. 



Christian 
pessimism. 



Words of 
the Master. 



194 ^ ^^^^ ^f ^^^ 

ture in which parents are to sing hallelu- 
jahs of praise as they see their children 
driven into the furnace, where they are to 
lie ' roasting ' forever, — we have a right to 
say that the man who held such beliefs and 
indulged in such imaginations and expres- 
sions, is a burden and not a support in refer- 
ence to the creed with which his name is 
associated. What heathenism has ever ap- 
proached the horrors of this conception of 
human destiny ? It is not an abuse of lan- 
guage to apply to such a system of beliefs 
the name of Christian pessimism." It has 
been said that if the Christian apostles, St. 
Peter and St. Paul, could return to Rome 
they might perchance inquire the name 
of the Deity who is worshiped with such 
mysterious rites in its. magnificent temple: 
at Oxford or Geneva they would experience 
less surprise ; but it might still be incum- 
bent on them to peruse the catechism of 
the church, and to study the orthodox com- 
mentators on their own writings and the 
words of their Master. It certainly would 
appear to them that the sects had departed 
far away from the teachings and example 
of the Founder, and that love to God and 
love for man were in danger of being buried 
forever under the rubbish of dogmas and 



A Club of One jg^ 

symbols. At the same time it would ap- 
pear very evident to them that materialism 
was speciously deified, and that mammon in 
all its forms was exalted, if not worshiped. 
It was only the other day that I happened 
to be lookino: out of the window, and wit- ^ sigtiifi- 

^ cant scene. 

nessed, at the corner of the street opposite, 
the meeting of a priest and a poor working- 
man of his church. The uncovered head 
of the poor man immediately and obeisantly 
went down in reverence — half-way to the 
pavement; while the priest made no move- 
ment, nor gave the slightest sign of recog- 
nition. The priest and the one rich man The priest 

r 1 • J ' . , ' , , cciid tJie rich 

of his congregation next met, an instant ^nan. 
after, near the same spot. The scene was 
significantly changed. The rich man in 
this instance gave no sign of recognition 
that could be perceived ; the priest it was 

— the recognized priest of the Most High 

— that bowed down abjectly to Mammon. 

No man ever existed, I suppose, who did 
not regret the acquaintance and association 
of certain persons, on account of their par- 
ticular bad influence over him. The evils 
that men suffer and inflict are so often di- 
rectly traceable to the influence and exam- 

1 r -1 • • n • Evilcom- 

ple 01 evil communications, that reflective tnurUcations. 



ig6 



A Club of One 



Genius in 
malice. 



Often aston- 
ished. 



persons find it difficult to separate them. 
One remarkable man it was my ill-fortune 
to know intimately for a time in my early 
life, of whom I am constantly reminded in 
all my evil thoughts and short-comings. 
His unusual ability and nature made him 
a very dangerous acquaintance. There 
was so much subtile penetration in his dis- 
paraging observation, and so much genius 
in his malice, that he was fascinating per- 
force. For forty years I have been trying 
to rid myself of the effects of a few months' 
association with him, and for forty years 
regretting that I ever met him. The con- 
siderable distinction he afterwards attained 
did not much modify his character; so that 
I have often been astonished that he died 
in his bed a natural death — that some- 
body did n't kill him, or that he did n't kill 
himself. I have wondered, too, that, as 
he was always secreting venom, he did not 
die of an excess of it. In Brazil, an opin- 
ion prevails that whoever has been bitten 
by a boa-constrictor has nothing to fear 
from any other reptile. Adapting the lan- 
guage of Sydney Smith applied to O'Con- 
nel — What a happy condition that of the 
man who had suffered abuse from my ven- 
omous acquaintance. It did not enter into 



A Club of One igy 

the head of Goethe that the publication of 
Werther would be followed by an epidemic 
of suicide. It would have surprised Dick- sukide, 
ens to learn that a copy of Martin Chuzzle- 
wit, open at the chapter describing the 
suicide of Jonas Chuzzlewit, was found by 
the side of a man who committed suicide 
in New York. Evil influence, like the 
''damned spot," will not "out." In a cor- 
ner of the Black Museum in London hang 
the clothes of a clergyman who murdered 
his wife some years ago. So carefully had 
the murderer washed his trousers and his 
coat-sleeves, that the blood-stains could siood^stains. 
only be discerned with difficulty at the 
time of the investigation. But since the 
coat and trousers have been hanging on 
the Black Museum's walls, the stains have 
come out close and thick. "We many 
times notice that here," the visitor is told. 
It deserves to be noticed (says Hawthorne, 
in his English Note-Books) that some small 
figures of Indian Thugs, represented as en- Indian 
gaged in their profession and handiwork ^"'^^' 
of cajoling and strangling travelers, have 
been removed from the place which they 
formerly occupied in the part of the Brit- 
ish Museum shown to the general public. 
They are now in the more private room, 



jg8 A Club of One 

and the reason of their withdrawal is, that, 
according to the chaplain of Newgate, the 
practice of garroting was suggested to the 
English thieves by this representation of 
Indian Thugs. Said James T. Fields in 
a lecture on Fiction in Brooklyn, '' I re- 

ThePom- cently paid a visit to the Pomeroy boy, 

eroy boy. ^^^ ^^^ scntcnccd to bc hanged for killing 
three children, but whose sentence was 
afterward commuted to imprisonment for 
life. I asked him if he read much. He 
said that he did. * What kind of books do 
you read t ' said I. * Mostly one kind,' he 

Dime novels. Said — * mostly dime novels.' ' What is the 
best book you have read } ' I asked. ' Well, 
I liked Buffalo Bill best,' he replied. * It 
was full of murders, and pictures about 
murders.' 'Well,' I asked, * how did you 
feel after reading such a book } ' ' Oh,* 
said he, ' I felt as if I wanted to do the 
same.' " Another remarkable instance of 
the direct influence of bad literature upon 
boys, I remember to have seen referred 
to authentically in a Western newspaper. 

Murdered Thc bodlcs of three murdered women were 
discovered in a house in a village. They 
were considerably decomposed — lime hav- 
ing been sprinkled over them ; and dime 
novels of the most objectionable character 



ivoTnen. 



A Club of One igg 

were found in the room, which had to all 
appearance been read by the murderer af- 
ter the murders had been committed. The 
suspected murderer was a son of one of Theboy- 

. , . murderer. 

the murdered women, and committed sui- 
cide soon after the crime was discovered. 
It was proven, at least, that he had bor- 
rowed the novels. He was but eighteen 
years old. 

Sin and bile, in the judgment of the ex- sinandbiie. 
cellent Hannah More, are the two bad 
things in this world. As to the unmiti- 
gated badness of the latter, my sufferings 
for the last few days fully attest. My 
whole system is inundated by it, and my 
complexion is a miserable yellow. My doc- 
tor talks wisely about it, but does not re- 
lieve me. My mind, too, is affected by it, 
and I find it very difficult indeed to think 
clearly or healthfully. Ah ! exclaimed an 
intellectual giant — suffering as I suffer 
from this distressing malady — what a dis- 
mal, debasing, and confusing element is 
that of a sick body on the human soul or a sick body 

,.,. iT-wci A.' ^ confusing 

thinking part ! But for the counteracting element. 
influence of my good books, I know not 
what I should do. On the front of the first 
national library founded in Egypt was en- 



200 A Club of One 

graved, "The medicine of the mind." The 
body, however, is often a despot, and the 
thinking part is in such subserviency that 
it can only very feebly exert itself. In all 
countries, says Leigh Hunt, the devil (to 
speak after the received theory of good 
and ill) seems to provide for a due dimi- 
Heaithand uutiou of health and happiness by some- 
^p'endlntlpon thing lu thc way of meat and drink. The 
northern nations exasperate their bile with 
beer, the southern with oil, and all with 
butter and pastry. I would swear that 
Dante was a great eater of " fries." Poor 
Buttered Lord Castlcrcagh had had his buttered 
'"^' toast served up for breakfast the day he 

killed himself. The opinion of a book, it 
has often been remarked, depends very 
much on the state of the liver. It has 
even been suggested that some charitable 
reformer may have been sagacious enough 
to discover a way to fuse sects and harmo- 
nize Christians, but that the liver of the 
book -taster consigned the desideratum, 
Therespon- abovc cvcry othcr, to obllviou. The respon- 
printerf slbiUty of priutcrs ! A very eminent phy- 
sician firmly believed that he had more 
than once changed the moral character of 
a boy by leeches to the inside of the nose. 
On the other hand, the mind affects the 



A Club of One 201 

body as directly, and sometimes very curi- 
ously. George Eliot wrote to one of her 
friends, " If you were to feel my bump of 
acquisitiveness, I dare say you would find 
it in a state of inflammation, like the * ven- 
eration ' of that clergyman to whom the 
phrenologist said, ' Sir, you have recently Religion 
been engaged in prayer.' " Jean Paul ob- ""'' 
served that the stomach of the butterfly 
shrinks up when his wings are spread. Sin 
and bile ! Bile and sin ! It has been said, 
by a profound student of human nature, 
that when an elevated mind looks into the 
abyss of evil beyond a certain depth, it is The abyss 0/ 
seized with a vertigo, and can no longer 
distinguish anything. In the Crystal Pal- 
ace, Hawthorne saw nothing in the sculp- 
tural way, either modern or antique, that 
impressed him so much as a statue of a 
nude mother by a French artist. In a sit- 
ting posture, with one knee over the other, 
she was clasping her highest knee with 
both hands ; and in the hollow cradle thus 
formed by her arms lay two sweet little Two sweet 

... , , , , . (. little babies. 

babies, as snug and close to her heart as 11 
they had not yet been born, — two little 
love blossoms, — and the mother encir- 
cling and pervading them with love. But 
an infinite pathos and strange terror were 



202 



A Club of One 



Cain and 
Abel. 



Solotnon's 
proclama- 
tion. 



Caligtda's 
datighter. 



given to this beautiful group by some faint 
bas-reliefs on the pedestal, indicating that 
the happy mother was Eve, and Cain and 
Abel the two innocent babes. Cain and 
Abel ! Abel and Cain ! Alas ! There is, 
says a writer upon mental disease, a des- 
tiny made for a man by his ancestors ; and 
no one can elude, were he able to attempt 
it, the tyranny of his organization. The 
power of hereditary influence in determin- 
ing an individual's nature, which, when 
plainly stated, must needs appear a tru- 
ism, has been more or less distinctly recog- 
nized in all ages. Solomon proclaimed it 
to be the special merit of a good man that 
he leaves an inheritance to his children's 
children ; on the other hand it has been 
declared that the sins of the father shall be 
visited upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generations. It was a proverb 
in Israel that when the fathers have eaten 
sour grapes the children's teeth are set on 
edge ; and it was deemed no marvel that 
those whose fathers had stoned the proph- 
ets should reject Him who was sent unto 
them — "■ Ye are the children of those who 
stoned the prophets." Complaint having 
been made to Caligula that his daughter, 
two years old, scratched the little children 



A Cluh of One 20^ 

who were her play-fellows, and even tried 
to tear out their eyes, he replied, with a 
laugh, " I see ; she is my daughter." Ri- 
bot speaks of a native New Zealander, in- 
telligent and curious, connected with the 
chief families of his country, who accom- 
panied an English traveler to London for 
education, but owing to the imperfect de- Education 
velopment of his mind he could under- ""'' ^^'^^'^'^y- 
stand nothing of European civilization, and 
interpreted everything according to the 
notions of a savage. Thus, when a rich 
man passed, he would say, " That man has 
a good deal to eat," unable to understand 
wealth in any other way. The missionary 
societies sometimes adopt Chinese infants Chinese m- 
and have them educated in European insti- 
tutions at great expense ; they go back to 
their own country with the resolve to prop- 
agate the Christian religion, but scarcely 
have they disembarked when the spirit of 
their race seizes upon them ; they forget 
their promises, and lose all their Christian 
beliefs. It might be supposed that they 
had never left China. The fact itself (says 
Mill, in his great little book On Liberty), 
of causing the existence of a human being, itytf'clJs' 

r ,1 ^ .11 ..• ' ing the ex- 

is one 01 the most responsible actions in istenceo/a 
the range of human life. To undertake in^."''^ ^' 



204 A Club of One 

this responsibility — to bestow a life which 
may be either a curse or a blessing — un- 
less the being on whom it is to be bestowed 
will have at least the ordinary chances of 
a desirable existence, is a crime against 
that being. Especially, another has re- 
Transmit- marked, no one who transmits defects of 
' his or her own, whether physical or moral, 
can help feeling that he has wronged the 
child in handing them down to it. The 
compunction must be particularly painful 
when the defect is moral. When a father 
in his son, or a mother in her daughter, 
Perversities sccs wcaknesscs and perversities outcrop- 
outcroppm^sr- pj^g whlch they clearly recognize as old 
personal property, they must doubt whether 
they are the persons who should punish 
the young offenders ; and it is not difficult 
to fancy that children, by some dim kind 
of instinct, partially discover the injustice 
of being scolded for teeth set on edge by 
the very people who have eaten the sour 
Grievous in- grapcs. It sccmcd grievous indeed to 
'^^'^' Charlotte Bront^ that those who have not 

sinned should suffer so largely. 

I have been thinking how very remark- 
able is the thoroughly enlightened, culti- 
vated man of this age of the world : he is 



A Club of One 20^ 

a marvel. Open and receptive to every ^ j„arvei. 
suggestion and influence, every thing has 
taught him, as every thing is constantly 
teaching him. Intelligence is in the air, 
and flies on the wings of the wind. It is 
not possible for him to avoid breathing 
and absorbing it. There is a character in ^ character 
Dickens, or somewhere in fiction, whose "'^^'^^^"'• 
occupation was in the wine-cellar amongst 
the butts and pipes ; he never drank any- 
thing, but he was always comfortable by 
absorption. So it is at this day with an 
open, healthy nature ; it has but to open 
its eyes and ears and pores (so to speak) 
to be enlightened. What we call study is study not as 

, j_ • ^ 1 1 • necessary as 

not so necessary to mtelligence as once. once. 
Every thing is an object-lesson, and teaches 
irresistibly. The results of genius and 
skill are everywhere, and they have been 
so intelligently worked out that they tell 
the processes of development. Machines 
are so much like the men they compete 
with and so often eclipse that they com- 
municate. Printed pages are to be had for 
the picking up. Science opens its doors 
gratuitously. Art everywhere adorns and Artadoms 
instructs. A good brain cooperating with '^tUJts. 
a good heart, with all opportunities and 
facilities at every turn, must develop good 



206 



A Club of One 



A good rep 
resentative 
specimen. 



A favorite 
rock. 



character and sovereign enlightenment. 
The possible man, of full growth, under 
such encouraging and stimulating circum- 
stances, is pleasant to contemplate. On an 
island in the sea, one bright Sunday morn- 
ing, not many years ago, I met a good 
representative specimen of high manhood, 
which sometimes appears to my memory, 
filling it full, to the exclusion of everything 
beside. It was after breakfast that I had 
sauntered down to my favorite rock, where 
I delighted to lounge when the weather 
was favorable. It sloped gently to the 
west, and was sheltered from the morning 
sun by the ledge behind. It overlooked a 
Thediminun diminutivc bay (the size of this library 

tive bay. 

room), which was always particularly inter- 
esting to me at low tide. At such times 
the kelp lay exposed, and specimens of 
star-fish and sea-urchins were sometimes 
visible. The puff of the locomotive was 
seen but not heard ten miles away, on 
the mainland. In favorable atmospheres I 
thought I could discern Mt. Washington, 
defining itself as a cloud in the distance. 
It was an interesting spot to dream at, as 
it is an interesting spot to dream of. I 
A gentleman fouud my rock occuplcd, by a gentleman 
mgray. ^^ gray — Say of fifty years of age; but 



A Club of One 2oy 

there was room enough for two, he in- 
sisted, and moved over. I had never seen 
him before ; but his manner and atmos- 
phere of gentility and good-breeding were 
assuring, and I sat down. Something was 
said of the morning, or the tide, or a pass- 
ing sail. The little bay, that he had just Theiittie 
discovered, seemed as interesting to him e%d)iZt. 
as it was to me. Its situation and accesso- 
ries were referred to in a compendious sen- 
tence or two, that denoted his full compre- 
hension of them. His observations upon 
the rock formations visible, showed him Rock/o 
familiar with the theories and conclusions ^"''"' 
of geology. His reference to a sea-urchin 
had the observation and intelligence of a 
naturalist in it. He called particular atten- 
tion to a long serpentine line of kelp, and Keip. 
in a few sentences gave me an amount 
of information of the remarkable sea-weed 
that I have never wholly forgotten. How 
it grows in lower latitudes on every rock 
from low water mark to a great depth, both 
on the outer coast and within the chan- 
nels ; how every rock near the surface is 
buoyed by this floating weed, — thus af- 
fording good service to vessels navigating 
near the stormy land, and saving many a 
one from being wrecked. Three hundred 



Of service to 
sailors. 



208 



A Club of One 



Creatures 
that ivotild 
perish. 



and sixty feet is the length it had been 
known to attain. He compared the great 
aquatic forests of the southern hemisphere 
with the terrestrial ones in the intertrop- 
ical regions, and said that if in any country 
a forest was destroyed, he believed not 
nearly so many species of animals would 
Effects of its perish as in the former, from the destruc- 

destritction. , . . ^ ^ a • i i i r 

tion of the kelp. Amidst the leaves of 
this plant numerous species of fish live, 
which nowhere else could find food or shel- 
ter ; with their destruction the many cor- 
morants and other fishing-birds, the otters, 
seals, and porpoises, would soon perish 
also ; and the Fuegian savage, the misera- 
ble lord of that miserable land, would re- 
double his cannibal feast, decrease in num- 
bers, and perhaps cease to exist. From 
considering the remarkable plant of the 
sea, and discoursing upon it, he naturally 
passed, in contrast, to the ship of the des- 
ert. Alive or dead, his information was, 
that almost every part of the camel is ser- 
viceable to man : her milk is plentiful and 
nutritious ; the young and tender flesh has 
the taste of veal ; a valuable salt is ex- 
tracted from the urine ; dung supplies the 
deficiency of fuel ; and the long hair, which 
falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely 



The came!. 



A Club of One 209 

manufactured into the garments, the furni- 
ture, and the tents of the Bedouins. It 
struck him, as it strikes the traveler, as 
something extremely romantic and myste- 
rious, the noiseless step of the camel, from Hisnoise- 
the spongy nature of his foot ; whatever be ^"^^^^" 
the substance of the ground — sand, or rock, 
or turf, or loose stones — you hear no foot- 
fall ; you see an immense animal approach- 
ing you, stilly as a cloud floating on air ; 
and, unless he wears a bell, your sense of 
hearing, acute as it may be, will give you 
no intimation of his presence. The Arabs, 
he said, could live five days without vict- 
uals, and subsist for three weeks on noth- 
ing else but the blood of their camels, who HisUood. 
could lose so much of it as would suffice 
for that time, without being exhausted. 
Thence the interesting man passed in the 
same intelligent way to the populations of 
the East — to the effects of commerce and 
Western ideas upon China and Japan ; to 
the opening of Africa, the wonderful dis- 
coveries there, and their probable influ- 
ence upon European trade and emigration. 
Thence to the adaptation of governments Adaptation 

, ., , - . _-. ,, of govern- 

to the new growth of nations. How all rnents. 
the religions were perceptibly changing in 
a similar manner. Noting, as he passed, 



2IO A Club of One 

some of the effects of the rushing progres- 
sion upon the habits and dispositions of 
men — increased restlessness, growing ma- 
teriahsm, and apparent diminution of faith 
being of the few results suggestively re- 
Acuteand fcrrcd to. His acute and comprehensive 

comprehen- . . . . 

sive. View — his easy passage irom one remote 

part of the world to another — reminded 
me of a sermon I had lately heard preached 
by Dr. Hitchcock — certainly one of the 
most vigorous pulpit thinkers in the world 

The whole — 11^ which thc wholc round earth was 

7J^if^lye!^ made to appear apart to the hearer's eye ; 
he turned it about as a teacher turns his 
revolving globe, and pointed to spots here 
and there, dimly or conspicuously lighted 
by Christianity and Christian civilization 
— all with so much freedom, simplicity, 
and intelligence, that it hardly occurred to 
me to guess, much less to conceive the 
prodigious diligence and exhausting study 
that had been necessary to the presenta- 
tion of the subject so comprehensively, so 
easily, and so naturally. This many-sided, 

A cosmopoii- cosmopolitan man, on my rock, talked of 
finance, but not of the machinery of the 
banker's office ; of commerce, but not of 
lines of railway or steamships ; of govern- 
ment, but not of office-holders or of office- 



A Club of One 211 

holding ; of polity, not politics ; of religion, 
not churches. I could not have guessed, 
at the end of his conversation, in what part 
of the world he lived ; with what political 
party, if any, he acted ; with what denomi- 
nation he worshiped ; in what occupation 
he had made his money. He had asked Heaskednc 
no questions, nor anticipated any. In all Vwrmltid- 
that he had said, there was no show of 
vanity, bigotry, intolerance, dogmatism, or 
aggressiveness. He had talked and I had 
listened. There was that in his manner 
which said, It happens so ; next time a re- 
verse ; you will talk and I will listen. The 
bell at the hotel called us to a late dinner. 
At the table, a glass of wine was brought a glass of 
to me by a servant from another part of ^"'^' 
the dining-hall, with the name and compli- 
ments of my companion of the morning. I 
returned my own name, of course, with the 
usual acknowledgment. After dinner he 
came to me as if he had known me always, 
extending his hand, and calling me by 
name — saying, that he wished to present 
me to his wife. With the accomplished His wife. 
lady I walked up and down the piazza for 
a few minutes, when my acquaintance (it 
seemed to me for ages in another state of 
being) made his appearance again, regret- 



212 A Club of One 

ting to take leave, as they were to embark 
in an hour for New York, to sail thence by- 
Wednesday's steamer for Europe. I have 
never seen or heard of the remarkable man 
The impres- since ; yet he made such an impression 
^dTstilctiy'in upon me, and I remember him so distinctly, 
memory. ^^^^ j cauuot hclp scttiug him down as 
a specimen of the thoroughly enlightened 
and cultivated man referred to in the be- 
ginning. 

The business Thc buslncss of reforming — re-forming 

of reform- , . . . , a 

ing. — makmg over — how mterestmg ! An 

occupation for saints, philosophers, and 
heroes. The instinct to unmake and re- 
make is very prevalent, and develops early. 
Only now and then a man is found who is 
not a born reformer. Himself perfect, the 
reformer would have everybody like him- 
self. If a hundred persons were stopped 
at haphazard in the streets of Paris, says 
Dumont, and a proposal were made to 
them to take charge of the Government, 

Ninety-nine ninety-uinc would accept it. Mirabeau ac- 

of one hun- , -x ,^ r i 

dred. cepted the post of reporter to the com- 

mittee on mines without having the slight- 
est tincture of knowledge on the subject. 
Men enter upon politics like the gentle- 
man who, on being asked if he knew how 



A Club of One 21^ 

to play the harpsichord, replied, " I cannot 
tell, I never tried, but I will see." Socrates 
used to say, that although no man under- 
takes a trade he has not learned, even the 
meanest, yet every one thinks himself suffi- Every man 

c -t-t -i a governor. 

ciently qualified for the hardest of all trades, 
that of government. As I have said, the 
instinct to govern — re-form — unmake — 
re-make — re-create — develops very early. 
A boy only thirteen years old, who had 
been reading newspapers of one party till 
he became impressed with the belief that 
the opposite party was in every way and in 
every thing essentially and totally corrupt, 
asked his mother, impatiently and indig- 
nantly, ''Why don't the Government abol- Aboy^sques- 
ish the Democrats } " His question was 
radical, and in the spirit of the reformer. 
A little legislation, in his estimation, was all 
that was necessary. Bolingbroke, though, 
understood such matters very differently. 
" It is a very easy thing to divine good 
laws ; the difficulty is to make them effec- 
tive. The great mistake is that of looking The great 

. . . , . , 1 mistake. 

upon men as virtuous, or thmkmg that they 
can be made so by laws." " Publish few 
edicts," said Don Quixote to Governor 
Sancho Panza, " but let them be good ; and, 
above all, see that they are well observed ; 



214 



A Club of One 



King Log's, 
experietice. 



A cts of par- 
liament. 



The Duke 
du Sully to 
some popish 



for edicts that are not kept are the same as 
not made, and seem only to show that the 
prince, though he had wisdom and author- 
ity to make them, had not the courage to 
insist upon their execution. Laws that 
threaten, and are not enforced, become • 
like King Log, whose croaking subjects 
first feared, then despised him." Canon 
Wilberforce, in a sermon in York Minster, 
speaking of the impossibility of restraining 
men's appetites and passions, said, " This 
is not the platform ; and yet, before this 
altar, I declare that there is nothing at 
which the devils laugh more than at an act 
of parliament." " Man," said Douglas Jer- 
rold, " will not be made temperate or virtu- 
ous by the strong hand of the law, but by 
the teaching and influence of moral power. 
A man is no more made sober by act of 
parliament than a woman is made chaste." 
There is a speech by the blunt Duke du 
Sully to an assembly of popish ladies, who 
were railing very bitterly at Henry the 
Fourth, at his accession to the French 
throne ; " Ladies," said he, " you have a 
very good king, if you knew when you are 
well. However, set your hearts at rest, 
for he is not a man to be scolded or 

scratched out of his kingdom." "The 

->■ 
I 



A Club of One 2r^ 

idea of reform," says Judge Brackenridge, 
in Modern Chivalry, *' delights the imagi- 
nation. Hence, reformers are prone to re- j?e/or7ners 
form too much. There is a blue and a bet- Jornitir' 
ter blue ; but in making the better blue, 
a small error in the proportion, of the 
drug, or alkali, will turn it black." Leigh 
Hunt, when a very young man, wrote a 
comedy which was never acted or pub- 
lished. It was entitled A Hundred a Year, 
and turned upon a hater of the country, 
who, upon having an annuity to that 
amount given him, on condition of his 
never going out of London, becomes a Thecon- 
hater of the town. "I cannot, for niy ^''''''■^ ^ ' 
part," says an acute essayist, ''understand 
how the frame of mind which is eager for 
proselytes should survive very early youth. 
I would not conceal my own views, but 
neither could I feel anxious to thrust them 
upon others ; and that, for the very simple 
reason that conversion appears to me to be 
an absurdity. You cannot change a man's 
thoughts about things as you can change 
the books in his library. The mind is not The viind h 
a box, which can have opinions inserted 
and extracted at pleasure. No belief is 
good for anything which is not part of an 
organic growth and the natural product of 



2i6 A Cliib of One 

a man's mental development under the va- 
rious conditions in which he is placed. To 
promote his intellectual activity, to encour- 
age him to think, and to put him in the 
way of thinking rightly, is a plain duty; 
Ready-made but to try to inscrt ready-made opinions 
fo"bTin-'°^ into his mind by dint of authority is to con- 
tradict the fundamental principles of free 
inquiry." ''Attempt to shape the world ac- 
cording to its poetry," said Dr. Riccabocca, 
''and you fit yourself for a mad-house. 
The farther off the age is from the realiza- 
tion of their projects, the more the philos- 
ophers have indulged them. Thus, it was 
amidst the saddest corruptions of court 
Afashionin manucrs that it became the fashion in Paris 

Paris. . - , . . , ^ . 

to Sit for one s picture, with a crook in 
one's hand as Alexis or Daphne. Just as 
liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and 
the successors of Alexander were founding 
their monarchies, and Rome was growing 
up to crush in its iron grasp all states 
save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes 
from the world, to open them in his dreamy 
Atlantis. Just in the grimmest period of 
English history, with the axe hanging over 
Sir Thomas hls hcad, Sir Thomas More gives us his 

More, zvith . r t t-» i 

ike axe over U topia. Thc crror of Jeremy Bentham 
and of John Locke, it has been remarked, 



A Club of One 21 y 

was in supposing that they in their closets 
could frame de novo a code for the people. 
The latter prepared a code more than a 
century ago for one of the North Ameri- 
can colonies, which proved a signal failure. 
Burke, upon being conducted by Erskine 
to his garden, through a tunnel under the 
road that divided the house from the shrub- 
bery, all the beauty of Kenwood (Lord 
Mansfield's place) and the distant prospect 
suddenly burst upon them. '^ Oh," ^2^.^ Burke's ex~ 
Burke, ''this is just the place for a reformer ^'^''''' "^' 
— all the beauties are beyond your reach." 
'* Sun ! how I hate thy beams ! " exclaimed 
the sick philosopher ; but the sick philoso- 
pher could not tear the sun out of the sky. 
This old world has been several thousand 
ages a part of the universe, and she cannot 
be easily jostled out of her place. The 
race of man has been as long developing ; 
and to go back to the beginning to begin 
the work of working it over — re-forming 
it — re-creating it — would discourage any Discourag- 
but courageous reformers of the aggressive ^-'^^"''"y 
type, who, in their zeal and sublime confi- Jc 
dence, think all things possible of accom- 
plishment. At the beginning they must 
begin, to be thorough. The evil — accu- 
mulating for thousands of ages — must be 



but cour- 

ageojis re- 

''orjtiers. 



2l8 



A Club of One 



Pretty and 
Christian. 



Movement 
not always 
progress. 



The arch- 
enemy. 



radically eliminated, to make room for the 
good that was lost at the Fall. Hobhouse 
saw it differently. He once said to Hunt 
that " the only real thing in life was to be 
always doing wrong, and always to be for- 
given for it." Commenting upon the re- 
mark, the poet asks, " Is not that pretty 
and Christian } " Whoever would transform 
a character, it has been well said, must 
undo a life history. The fixed and un- 
changing laws by which events come to 
pass hold sway in the domain of mind as in 
every other domain of nature. As things 
are, it is not always easy to know what is 
right or best. Movement is not always 
progress. Parry, in his Polar expedition, 
while urging northward along the ice his 
sleighs and Samoyede dogs, found, when 
the sun, bursting through the fog, revealed 
his position, that he had been unconsciously 
traveling several degrees to the southward, 
since he had been journeying on a mass of 
floating ice borne by the ocean currents to 
the south. The devil — the principle of 
evil — whatever you call him or it — all 
men agree in regarding the arch-enemy. 
Resist him until resistance becomes habit, 
and he will not much trouble you ; permit 
him liberties, and you are his, body and 



A Club of One 21 g 

spirit. King Zohak,, as Southey relates it, 
gave the devil leave to kiss his shoulders. 
Instantly, two serpents sprang out, who, in 
the fury of hunger, attacked his head, and 
attempted to get at his brain. Zohak 
pulled them away, and tore them with his 
nails. But he found that they were insep- 
arable parts of himself, and that what he partso/ 
was lacerating was his own flesh. 

Alas ! Alas ! I am troubled now with Troubled 
my eyes. Fortunately, with all my varied ^^k 
and multiplied diseases and ailments, my 
eyesight has remained unimpaired, until 
within a very few days. My doctor is not 
quite clear as to the trouble, and suggests 
that I should consult a specialist. The 
thought of blindness terrifies me. To sit 
in darkness the remainder of my days, 
without the resource of vision to fortify 
me against innumerable distresses, would 
be awful. Without my usual supply of 
honey from my library I should starve. Homy from 
My faculties must be generously fed, and 
the food they require is of the richest and 
daintiest varieties. " My mind my king- 
dom is." As I sit in my easy-chair, how- 
ever rheumatism may rack me, my eye can 
run along the shelves, and my mind enjoy 



220 



A Cluh of One 



The gods 

sympathize. 



Jacob and 
Daniel 



the society of a century of worthies of all 
the ages. With the companionship of the 
gods, the gout, even, may be endured. 
The gods sympathize. They all have 
known suffering, and derision, and isola- 
tion. "To live alone is the chastisement 
of whoever will raise himself too high.'* 
Tortured, imprisoned, beheaded, many of 
them were. " Awful is the duel between 
man and the age in which he lives ! " 
Starved often, they fed on ambrosia, and 
are immortal. Jacob, with the heavens for 
a tent, and the stones for a pillow, saw the 
angels ascending and descending. Daniel, 
declining the king's wine and meat, and 
living on vegetables and water, interpreted 
the king's vision. Generous memory must 
supply me for a while. My doctor says I 
must not read : that a little reading, even, 
is perilous. And writing — the least — he 
absolutely prohibits. This record of my 
idleness, therefore, must be laid aside. 
Sorry ; for this essaying at composition is 
more nearly an amusement than anything 
that I attempt. In a limited way I shall 
A cherished be drlvcn to adopt a scheme that has long 
been in my mind. I long have thought 
that if I were a rich man I should have a 
dozen competent persons, or more, to read 



1 



A Chih of One 221 

for me. They should be selected for their 
special fitness, and paid generous salaries, 
that their minds might be entirely at ease, 
and wholly at my service. The world 
abounds in scholars, who would be glad of scholars to 
such employment. Books would be sup- /«/;«. 
plied to them liberally. Twenty thousand 
dollars a year I should enjoy expending in 
that way. I should then feel that I might 
be fairly acquainted with the moral, intel- 
lectual, and material progress of the whole 
earth. Certain of the sciences I should 
have men employed upon of the highest o/the high- 
order that could be obtained. Certain parts 
of the world I should have explored and 
studied to the utmost extent that books 
would permit. Eleemosynary and mission- 
ary efforts of every description I should 
have known and tabulated. The great 
growth of the Great West — known to rke Great 
geographers only a few years ago as the 
Great American Desert — I should have 
noted as intelligently as swift progress 
would allow. I should have a man for 
South America and the Pacific Islands, 
who should report to me every sign of 
growth and civilization in those isolated 
regions. I should have another for Africa, 
who should be specially competent for that 



West. 



So7ltk 

A vierica. 



222 



A Club of One 



The Dark 
Continent. 



China. 



A strange 
fact. 



Japan. 



most interesting field. The rivers and 
the lakes of the Dark Continent he should 
explore with Livingstone and Stanley, and 
others, and carefully set down every new 
settlement, with its resources and pur- 
poses, as far as could be ascertained. In- 
dia should be invaded and ransacked by a 
competent reader. And China, with all 
her peculiarities, philosophies, and supersti- 
tions, should be carefully and searchingly 
studied. China ! — that strange country, 
where ''objects terrestrial and celestial, 
objects visible and invisible, and objects 
real and imaginary, are made the recipients 
of homage ; but among them all there is 
not one the object of the worship of which 
is to make the devotee more pure and 
more sincere, more honest, more virtuous, 
or more holy. The object whose attain- 
ment is desired is always selfish, sensual, or 
secular." And Japan — a more wonderful 
country still — I should keep a man, or two 
men, constantly engaged in investigating. 
If practicable, a thoroughly intelligent per- 
son who had traveled in that country 
should be employed. The decaying religion 
of the Japanese he should be instructed to 
comprehend if possible ; and especially he 
should be instructed to observe whatever 



A Club of One 22^ 

is taking its place. The awful poverty of Aw/uipov- 
that old country where humanity is such a ^''^^' 
drug, and where the graveyards are greater 
in population than the towns ; yet Dai- 
koku, the god of wealth, is in every house 
and worshiped by every inhabitant, with 
body and spirit ; — where the children are 
taught the gloomiest fatalism from the ear- Thegioom- 

T , , r -I • 1 iest/atalisfn. 

liest moment of comprehension; — where 
soap is not used, — only a little sand in a 
running stream ; — where the children do 
not cry ; — where the process of milking a 
cow is unknown ; — where such necessary 
articles as pins are never seen. A traveler 
in the interior of the country for hundreds 
and hundreds of miles never heard a child Nochud 
cry ! *' Such queer crowds," she says ; " so '^^^ ' 
silent and gaping, remaining motionless for 
hours, the wide awake babies, on the moth- 
ers' backs and in the fathers' arms, never 
crying." '* In Yusowa," she writes, '* I 
took my lunch in a yard, and the people a scene. 
crowded in hundreds to the gate, and those 
behind being unable to see me, got ladders 
and climbed on the adjacent roofs, where 
they remained till one of the roofs gave 
way with a loud crash, and precipitated 
about fifty men, women, and children into 
the room below, which fortunately was va- 



224 ^ ^^^^^ ^f O^^ 

scantcos- cant. Nobody screamed ! " The scant cos- 
tumes of a large proportion of the popula- 
tion in the interior are curious. The same 
traveler reports that the younger children 
wear nothing at all but a string and an am- 
ulet. " Could anything," she asks, ** be a 

A strange straugcr sight than a decent-looking, mid- 
dle-aged man, lying on his chest in the 
veranda, raised on his elbows, and intently 
reading a book, clothed only in a pair of 
spectacles t " Many of the men in the 

A hat and a ricc-fields wcar only a hat, with a fan at- 
tached to a girdle. As the lady rode 
through Yokote, a town of ten thousand 
souls, the people rushed out from the baths 
to see her, men and women alike, without 

Art. a particle of clothing. Art, too, I should 

have a competent reader in — an artist if 
possible — to report the achievements of 
the greatest painters and sculptors. The 

Literature, novcl ficlds of litcraturc should be scoured ; 
in a word, every thing knowable, present 
and past, should be known, as far as was 
practicable, and communicated to me, at 
stated hours, to suit my convenience — 
intelligently, enthusiastically, exuberantly. 

%20fiooa Twenty thousand dollars a year expended 

^^'''^" in that delightful way, for enlightenment, 

entertainment, and occupation, I should 
consider cheap and magnificent pleasure. 



A Cluh of One 22^ 

" The burden and the mystery of all 
this unintelligible world." " Through mys- Through 
tery to mystery." There is nothing beau- TnylLVy^" 
tiful, sweet, or grand in life, it has been 
said, but in its mysteries. The sentiments 
which agitate us most strongly are envel- 
oped in obscurity : modesty, virtuous love, 
sincere friendship, have all their secrets, 
with which the world must not be made 
acquainted. Hearts which love understand 
each other by a word ; half of each is at all 
times open to the other. Innocence itself imwcencea 

11- • r ^"^y igno- 

is but a holy ignorance, and the most mef- ranee. 
fable of mysteries. Infancy is only happy 
because it as yet knows nothing ; age mis- 
erable because it has nothing more to 
learn. Happily for it, when the mysteries 
of life are ending, those of immortality 
commence. Heraclitus, it is known, com- Heracutus's 

book. 

posed a book On Nature, which he depos- 
ited in the temple of Diana. The style in 
which it was written was purposely ob- 
scure, that it might be read only by the 
learned, he being afraid, if it were to af- 
ford entertainment to the people generally, 
that it would soon become so common as 
to procure him only contempt. This book, 
says Lucretius, gained extraordinary repu- 
tation, because nobody understood it. Da- ^erLldit. 



226 A Club of One 

rius, king of Persia, having heard of it, 
wrote to the author to induce him to come 
and explain it to him, offering him, at the 
same time, a handsome reward and a lodg- 
ing in his own palace ; but Heraclitus re- 

swift. fused to go. Swift's profound knowledge 
of human nature led him to envelop his 
publications in all the mystery possible. 
" After the Tale of a Tub and Battle of the 
Books had been handed about in manu- 
script for years, they were published anon- 

voiiaire. ymously. Voltaire's latest French editors 
give a list of his one hundred and eight 
pseudonyms. The mystery and obscurity 
of The Divine Comedy gave it the inter- 
est and almost the importance of a new 
religion for a century or more. Steele 
says the art of managing mankind is only 
to make them stare a little to keep up 
their astonishment ; to let nothing be fa- 
miliar to them, but ever to have some- 
thing in their sleeve, in which they must 

Rabelais. think you are deeper than you are. Rab- 
elais struck terrible blows, then hid him- 
self in his humor. His general incompre- 
hensibleness was his strength with the 
multitude, which laughed without always 
knowing what it was laughing about — the 
object satirized being presented in all sorts 



A Club of One 22y 

of disguises. The wisdom and beauty of 
Tristram Shandy : how few readers discover 
or appreciate them, compared with the 
greater number who delight in its nonsense 
and coarseness. The influence and fame 
of the Letters of Junius were more the >«zw. 
result of the mystery of their authorship 
than of their essential ability. The fact 
that they have been attributed to so many 
is evidence that many were thought capa- 
ble of producing them. While books con- 
tinue to be printed upon the subject of 
their origin, and the wisest of men exercise 
themselves in speculating upon the same, 
copies of the famous Letters will multiply, The/amous 
and be thought necessary to every library, ^'''^^''^'■ 
though the events which produced them 
have long ceased to be of much interest, 
except to the most curious student. What 
were romance - writing without mystery .'* 
The story-writer must not only be ingen- 
ious in inventing his mysteries, but he 
must be skillful in carrying them, to suc- 
ceed with the public. Great is the mys- rhe mystery 
tery of godliness. In the attempt to know "^ ^''^^"''''■ 
the unknowable, creeds have been pro- 
duced and sects organized. If its teach- 
ers had taught the practice of Christianity 
continually, and not expended themselves 



united. 



/ 



228 A Cluh of One 

in developing systems of theology, all 
Christen- Christendom would long ago have been 

dom would ' . / . 

havebeen 3. United army agamst Satan. Quiet is 
/ 1 thought to be proof of reserved force. The 
f individual who keeps his own counsel is 
always overestimated by the public. The 
same is the case with the estate of a man 
who is careful to be out of debt. The lady 
who does not cheapen herself by careless 
association and much display, is invested 
and clothed by the public with every vir- 
tue. All the world acknowledges that fe- 
licitous reserve which La Rochefoucauld 

The mystery has callcd *' thc mvsterv of the lady." An 

of the lady. . t, • • , T^U 1J 

air 01 success — how imposing ! The world 
pays court to it unconsciously. Boswell 
said Beauclerk told a story with that air of 
the world that had an inexpressibly im- 
pressive effect, as if there were something 
more than was expressed, or than perhaps 
could be perfectly understood. The influ- 
A compound cncc of what Grammont calls " a compound 
countenance," is not merely puzzling, it is 
powerful. Squeers, when introducing Nich- 
olas to his school, looked very profound, 
as if he had a perfect apprehension of what 
was inside all the books, and could say 
every word of their contents by heart if 
he only chose to take the trouble. Lord 



countenance. 



A Club of One 22g 

Thurlow carried himself with such a ma- Thurio-w. 
jestic air that only the more intelligent 
ever asked themselves whether any one 
could really be as wise as Lord Thurlow al- 
ways seemed. Talleyrand was a mysteri- Taiieyrand. 
ous character. No one, it appears, could 
even intelligently guess his motives or pur- 
poses. Suspicion, caution, wickedness, 
subtilty, alertness, were natural to him, at 
the same time they were so mysteriously 
hidden in the recesses of his character, 
that their existence as essential parts of 
him were hardly thought of. At the very 
time he was most ready for a deadly when ready 
spring, he appeared as quiescent as if all sprilg'"' ^ 
his faculties were dormant. *' What does 
he mean by it } " he asked, when a cele- 
brated diplomatist fell ill. The report of the 
death of George III. having just obtained 
circulation throughout Paris, a banker, by 
hook or by crook, managed to obtain an 
audience with Talleyrand, who was then 
Minister for Foreign Affairs. The banker, The ba^tk- 
who, like many of his financial brethren, Ziew"^"^' 
wished to make a good hit, and thought 
the present a favorable opportunity, had 
the indiscretion to reveal to the minister 
the real object of his visit. Talleyrand 
listened to him without moving a muscle 



2^o A Club of One 

of his phlegmatic visage, and at length re- 
plied in a solemn tone, " Some say that 
the king of England is dead, others say 
that he is not dead ; but do you wish to 
know my opinion ? " *' Most anxiously, 
Not very prlnce ! " " Well, then, I believe — neither I 
satisfactory, j j^gn^JQ^ this iu Confidence to you ; but I 
rely on your discretion : the slightest im- 
prudence on your part would compromise 
me most seriously." Madame Flamelin 
one day reproached M. de Moutron with 
his attachment to Talleyrand. " Good God ! 
madame," replied M. de Moutron, " who 
A compii- could help liking him, he is so wicked ! " 
^*''^' It was a maxim of his, that a man should 

make his debut in the world as though he 
were about to enter a hostile country ; he 
must send out scouts, establish sentinels, 
and even be upon the watch himself. 
Madame de Stael said of him, '' The good 
Maurice is not unlike the manikins which 
children play with — dolls with heads of 
cork and legs of lead ; throw them up 
which way you please, they are sure to fall 
on their feet." Motley describes the mys- 
Phiiipii. terious, the Jesuitical, the powerful Philip 
II. at his writing-table, *' scrawling his apos- 
tilles." " The fine, innumerable threads 
which stretched across the surface of Chris- 



A Cluh of One 2^1 

tendom, and covered it as with a net, all 
converged in that silent cheerless cell. 
France was kept in a state of perpetual France in 
civil war ; the Netherlands had been con- dvuwar. 
verted into a shambles ; Ireland was main- 
tained in a state of chronic rebellion ; Scot- 
land was torn with internal feuds, regularly 
organized and paid for by Philip ; and its 
young monarch — ' that lying king of 
Scots,' as Leicester called him — was kept 
in a leash ready to be slipped upon Eng- 
land, when his master should give the 
word ; and Eng^land herself was palpitating England 

. ', 1 .-, . r ' T palpitating. 

With the daily expectation 01 seeing a dis- 
ciplined horde of brigands let loose upon 
her shores ; and all this misery, past, pres- 
ent, and future, was wholly due to the 
existence of that gray-haired letter-writer 
at his peaceful writing-table." But there 
was a man in Holland, — more mysterious, 
more taciturn, more impenetrable, — named 
William the Silent, — who somehow con- wiiiiamtJte 
trived, every night, while the wily monarch 
slumbered, to have his writing-desk care- 
fully examined, its contents intelligently 
noted, and scrupulously reported — the 
most interesting secret in history. George 
Washington was a mysterious personage, washing- 
His nature was impenetrable : it was not 



Silent. 



ton. 



2^2 A Club of One 

comprehended, and is not, to this day. No 
A charmed wondcr he was believed to have a charmed 
life. Some years after the battle known 
as Braddock's Defeat, an old Indian sa- 
chem visited Washington, and told him 
that he was one of the warriors in the ser- 
vice of the French, who lay in ambush on 
the banks of the Monongahela, and wrought 
such havoc in Braddock's army. He de- 
clared that he and his young men had 
singled him out, as he made himself con- 
spicuous riding about the field of battle 
with the general's orders, and had fired 
at him repeatedly, but without success; 
whence they had concluded that he was 
Protected undcr thc protection of the Great Spirit, 
spirit. had a charmed life, and could not be slain 
in battle. The mysterious and the incom- 
prehensible were readily believed to be 
superhuman. An eminent English woman 
has remarked it as a singular fact that 
whenever we find out how anything is 
done, our first conclusion seems to be that 
God did not do it. The greater the igno- 
The power rancc, the greater the power of mystery 
o mysery. ^^^^ .^^ \y^^^ a jallcr whilc Lcigh Hunt 

was a prisoner, was a self-willed, ignorant 
creature. He was not proof, however, 
against a Greek copy of Pindar, which he 



A Club of One 2^^ 

happened to light upon one day amongst 
Hunt's books. "Its unintelligible charac- ^««k/«^^/- 

, , T , , , . ligible book. 

ter, says the poet, " gave him a notion 
that he had got somebody to deal with who 
might really know something which he did 
not. Perhaps the gilt leaves and red mo- 
rocco binding had their share in the magic. 
The upshot was, that he always showed 
himself anxious to appear well with me, as 
a clever fellow, treating me with great 
civility on all occasions but one, when I 
made him very angry by disappointing him 
in a money amount. The Pindar was a riiePindar 
mystery that staggered him. I remember 
very well, that giving me a long account 
one day of something connected with his 
business, he happened to catch with his eye 
the shelf that contained it, and whether he 
saw it or not, abruptly finished by observing, 
*But, mister, you knows all these things 
as well as I do.' " Naturalists refer to the 
mysterious hypocrisies of nature, and how rkemyste- 

rious hypoc- 

thev repeat themselves with more or less nsies o/na- 
completeness and consciousness m the 
mental life of man. What, it is asked, is 
the vast force exerted by habit in mould- 
ing men into the likeness of the society to 
which they belong, except a device for 
making them safe by preventing them from 



2^4 ^ C"///^ of One 

being conspicuous, just as the small green 

caterpillar is made safe and unconspicuous 

by its resemblance to the color of the 

A suggestive Icavcs on which it feeds. And is there 

inquiry. 

really any human analogy for the harmless 
snake and the sphinx caterpillar, which 
succeed by appearing to possess dangerous 
qualities which they have not, or more 
dangerous qualities than any they really 

Hypocrisy, havc ? Hypocrisy is the most specious, 
the most artful, the most impenetrable, 
the most mysterious of all the crimes, or 
sins, or vices. It was only pardonable, one 

^^/^^« ^;^^ ^/ would think, "when theological controver- 

the necessa- 
ries of life, sies were converted into engmes of oppres- 
sion, which filled prisons, ruined families, 
and exiled virtuous men, — rendering hypoc- 
risy one of the necessaries of life." When 
deliberate and voluntary, it has marvelous 
advantages. " It is an act," says Mohere, 
'' of which the imposture is always re- 
spected ; and though it may be discovered, 
no one dares to do anything against it. 
All the other vices of man are liable to 
censure, and every one has the liberty of 
boldly attacking them ; but hypocrisy is a 
A privileged privileged vice, which with its hand closes 
everybody's mouth, and enjoys its repose 
with sovereign impunity." But how odi- 



A Cliih of One 2^5 

ous to God are hypocrites, is denoted in 
the force of that dreadful expression, And 
his portion shall be with the hypocrites. 
"You will find in the Holy Scriptures," 
says Sir Roger L' Estrange, "that God has 
given the grace of repentance to persecu- 
tors, idolaters, murderers, adulterers, etc., 
but I am mistaken if the whole Bible af- '^^jf ^J^^^ 

affords no 

fords any one instance of a converted instance of a 

•f com'ertea 

hypocrite." hypocrite. 

Yes ; I am a fogy, and not a reformer. 
While I cannot help lamenting certain ten- 
dencies in our civilization, I do not pretend 
to know a way of correcting or diverting 
them. Nor am I in any sense a preacher, in no sense a 
My physical disabilities and isolation pre- ^'^^"''^ 
vent me from being anything but a spec- 
tator. I see, and muse, and rarely utter 
myself; knowing perfectly well that my 
views of many things, when I express them, 
are sure to be considered distempered. It 
is possible, I admit, that my conclusions His conciu- 
may sometimes be colored by my dis- ''°'^' 
tresses ; but what are they in influence, 
compared with the active man's prejudices, 
jealousies, and interests } If the sick man 
be more or less a coward, and only able to 
utter feebly his half-truths, the well man Haif-truths. 



2^6 



A Club of One 



The lusty 
partisan or 
bigot. 



Passio7t the 
opposite of 
reason. 



One of the 
jnodern ten- 
dencies. 



is ambitious, aggressive, and very much 
a bully. With his two big fists, and his 
round veins filled with hot blood, he crushes 
his way, — as often in defiance of reason 
as in compliance with it. I here who sit 
in solitude, deploring, am as apt to be right, 
possibly, as the lusty partisan or bigot, 
with his battle-axe of violence. "■ Reason," 
says Goethe, " is the property of an elect 
few." Soundness, equanimity, and true 
courage, are its legitimate offspring. Few 
there be that are healthy, in the full sense,, 
and fewer that are wise, and they only at 
times, under favorable conditions. As an- 
ger is madness, so is passion the opposite 
of reason. At one time, the passionate man 
is Herculean and inflexible ; at another, 
he is powerless and plastic. Confucius 
said, " I have not seen a firm and unbend- 
ing man." Some one replied, ''There is 
Sin Ch'ang." " Ch'ang," said the Master, 
"is under the influence of the passions; 
how can he be pronounced firm and un- 
bending } " And this leads me to speak 
of one of the modern tendencies — in my 
mind when I began this paragraph. It is, 
to unman men, — to disindividualize them. 
Morals therefore, as a result, it seems to 
me, less and less, are based upon personal 



A Cluh of One 257 

responsibility. Man, in the old-fashioned 
view, was held a man, — responsible per- 
sonally for his conduct. His ambition was TheamM- 
to breast the current, and to avoid being manholT^ 
turned about, as the twig, by every little 
eddy. If he made the voyage successfully, 
there was heroism in him. Character was 
so much effort, and resistance, and endur- 
ance. Manliness was held to be accretive Manliness. 
and cumulative. Every trial was thought 
to give another resource, and every con- 
quest to add new power. Each achieve- 
ment gave increased confidence. Growth 
was obvious, and calculable, and applica- 
ble. To cut the cable, and launch away 
from conventional helps and restraints, was rheconven- 
the common ambition. The individual felt 
fettered and shorn, if dependent. Before 
he consented to surrender himself and be 
subordinate, he must be tried by trusts, 
perils, and calamities. He aspired to stand 
an individual man, — responsible to all men Personal re- 

• 1 • Tk.T sp07isibility . 

for all the manhood that was m him. Now, 
the tendency is directly the other way, — 
to underestimate, if not totally to sink, the 
individual. The theory is rapidly becom- 
ing ascendant that the business of Govern- 
ment is to take care of the citizen. Man 
is transcended by the machine, and he is 



238 



A Club of One 



Societies of 
every sort. 



Orders and 

orgajiiza- 

tions. 



Individual- 
ity. 



Not trans- 
ferable. 



disindividualized by societies of every sort. 
The state educates him ; his social set gov- 
erns his conduct ; he admits his inability 
to take care of his earnings, and trusts the 
savings bank for extremities ;' the insur- 
ance company provides for his family af- 
ter his death ; — orders and organizations, 
ready-made, of every description, for every- 
thing, .divine and human, to take charge of 
his soul, his body, and his estate, here and 
hereafter. Instead of boiling up individ- 
uals into the species, I would, with Jane 
Carlyle, draw a chalk circle round every in- 
dividuality, and preach to it to keep within 
that, and preserve and cultivate its identity 
at the expense of ever so much lost gilt of 
other people's ''isms." It seems to me as 
it did to Emerson, that the Deity dressed 
each soul which he sends into nature in 
certain virtues and powers not communi- 
cable to other men, and sending it to per- 
form one more turn through the circle of 
beings, wrote " Not transferable," and 
" Good for this trip only," on these gar- 
ments of the soul. In the war of civiliza- 
tion upon man, the growth of the individ- 
ual is systematically discouraged. Soon he 
finds himself underestimating himself, in 
contrast with the omnipotence of organi- 



A Club of One 2^9 

zation and machinery ; then he surren- 
ders, and begins living for the day, to be 
warmed by the sun, and to be cared for as warmed hy 
an mcompetent. His efforts cease to be 
continuous and persistent. They are not 
consciously continued from yesterday, to 
be extended throughout to-morrow and to- 
morrow, until his work is accomplished 
or scheme realized. " The height charms, 
the steps to it do not ; with the summit 
in view, we walk along the plain." Thor- Thorough- 
oughness is less and less in vogue. The andhssin 

vogue. 

world is filling up with Dick Tintos, who 
begin to paint without any notion of draw- 
ing. Sir Thomas Lawrence's drawings 
were so perfect that it seemed a sin to add 
any color to them. The same may be said 
of Lessing's. Dick was for a time patron- Patronized 

for a time, 

ized, as the story goes, by one or two of 
those judicious persons who make a virtue 
of being singular, and of pitching their own 
opinions against those of the world in mat- 
ters of taste and criticism. But they soon 
tired of poor Tinto, and laid him down as a 
load, upon the same principle chat a spoilt 
child throws away its plaything. Misery Misery took 
took him up, and accompanied him to a 
premature grave, to which he was carried 
from an obscure lodging, where he had 



240 A Club of One 

been dunned by his landlady within doors, 
and watched by bailiffs without, until death 
came to his relief. 



A nother 
President 
inaugu- 
rated. 



So another President has been peace- 
fully inaugurated (with less than the usual 
measure of nonsense), after all the excite- 
ments and threats of a long period of par- 
tisan violence. I feel an impulse to expa- 
tiate about it all a little ; but my eyes are 
a perpetual warning. I cannot help, how- 
An acute re- cvcr, quotlug an cxtrcmcly acute remark 
of Harriet Martineau's, in her Society in 
America, published as long ago as 1837: 
" Irish emigrants occasionally fight out the 
battle of the Boyne in the streets of Phila- 
delphia, but native Americans bestow their 
apprehensions and their wrath upon things 
future, and their philosophy upon things 
past. While they do this, it will not be in 
the power of any President to harm them 
much or long." 

Thedimen- Some nlcc calculatlons as to the dimen- 

siomqfhell. . -,,- ,. ,., -, 

sions of hell are to be found m the old 
books, and are interesting. Ribera, a cu- 
rious divine, calculated hell to be " a mate- 
rial and local fire in the centre of the 
earth, two hundred Italian miles in diam- 



lions of 
damned 
bodies. 



A Club of One 241 

eter." But Lessius, another divine, " would 
have this local hell far less, one Dutch mile 
in diameter, all filled with fire and brim- 
stone ; because, as he demonstrated, that 
space, cubically multiplied, would make a 
sDhere able to hold eight hundred thou- Eight hun- 

i^ , 1 T / 11 • dred thou- 

sand millions of damned bodies (allowmg sandmu- 
each body six cubic feet), which would 
abundantly suffice." 

What a thing is the human brain ! Phys- J^^^.;^^"'^^ 
iologists tell us that a fragment of the 
gray substance of it, not larger than the 
head of a small pin, contains parts of many 
thousands of commingled globes and fibres. 
Of ganglion globules alone, according to 
the estimate of Meynert, there cannot 
be less than six hundred millions in the J>f;-^-^ 
convolutions of a human brain. They are globules. 
indeed in such infinite numbers that pos- 
sibly only a small portion of the globules 
provided are ever turned to account in 
even the most energetic brains. " What 
else than a natural and mighty palimpsest aju^^^ 
is the human brain ? " exclaims De Quin- 
cey. '' Everlasting layers of ideas, images, 
feelings, fall upon it as softly as light. 
Each succession seems to bury all that 
went before. And yet, in reality, not one 



242 



A Club of One 



The human 
soul like a 
deep and 
sombre lake. 



is extinguished." Coleridge tells a story 
of a servant maid, who, in a fever, spoke 

Remarkable Greek, Hebrew, and Latin ; Erasmus men- 
tsc osures. ^^^^^ ^^ Italian who spoke German, though 
he had forgotten that language for twenty- 
years ; there is also a case recorded of a 
butcher's boy who, when insane, recited 
passages from the Phedre which he had 
heard only once. Every experience a man 
has, it is asserted, lies dormant within 
him ; the human soul is like a deep and 
sombre lake, of which light reveals only 
the surface ; beneath there lives a whole 
world of animals and plants, which a storm 
or an earthquake may suddenly bring to 
light before the astonished consciousness. 
A rush of a little alcoholized blood to 

The brain a thc bralu, thc fumcs of opium or hasheesh, 

delicate ma- 
chine, may produce the most surprising results in 

the mental machine. A few drops of bel- 
ladonna or of henbane give rise to fearful 
visions. A little pus accumulated in the 
brain, a lesion so slight that the microscope 
can scarce detect it, gives rise to mental 
disorganizations called delirium, insanity, 
monomania. Some years ago, for a change, 
I spent a few weeks at a country water- 
ing place. My condition, at the particular 
time I am to speak of, was peculiar, — so 



A Club of One 24^ 

strange indeed that I believed myself on 

the point of a dangerous fever. I had not Atthef'oint 

consulted a physician, from a lack of con- ous/ever. 

fidence in the only one to be had nearer 

than the neighboring city. One night, as 

I lay in my bed, — the full moon pouring 

in its light with such splendor and strength 

as to make the smallest objects in the 

room visible, — I reflected in terror upon 

the risk of passing another hour without 

medical advice. My brain was so excited 

— the whole mental machinery was run- Theme7ttai 

nmg at such a tremendous speed — that it rtmnmgata. 

tremendous 

seemed m the very act of flymg to pieces, speed. 
The thought of sleep in such a state was 
terrifying to me ; to remain awake was 
more terrible still. I employed every men- 
tal device I could think of to quiet myself, 
at the same time I did everything possible 
to preserve consciousness. In spite of me, 
while contemplating with such composure 
as I could the full round moon pouring its 
flood of light over me, my eyelids closed, 
and I thouo^ht I was present early at a At a great 

^ ^ -^ meeting itt 

great meeting, assembling in Union Square union 
to take into consideration the condition of 
the Republic, and to devise such means as 
might be thought best to aid her in her 
distressing extremity. The civil war was 



244 



A Club of One 



Every inter- 
est in peril. 



Gatherifig, 
gatheri7ig. 



A hundred 
thousand. 



Brooding 
anxiety. 



A list of 
vice-presi- 
dents. 



raging in all its fury. Whole divisions of 
troops had been cut up, and the tempests 
had scattered the fleets. All interests 
seemed to be in peril, and every citizen 
was soberly anxious. I had gone to the 
great meeting early, as I have said. The 
people were gathering rapidly. They came 
in carriages, in omnibuses, in horse-cars, on 
foot. Every vehicle appeared to be crowd- 
ed, and to leave each one of its passen- 
gers. Soon the people filled the square, 
and then the broad pavements around the 
square, and then the broad streets around 
the broad pavements, and then the broad 
pavements on the opposite sides of the 
broad streets, and then the door-steps all 
round, and windows, and house-tops — a 
hundred thousand. I looked under each 
hat rim and into each hat, and saw every 
face of every man and woman. I recog- 
nized the faces of many familiar acquaint- 
ances and the faces of many that I only 
occasionally saw. The same brooding anx- 
iety marked the multitude of visages. The 
vast assemblage was called to order by 
Mr. Elliot C. Cowdin, a well-known mer- 
chant. His little speech was neat and ap- 
propriate : I heard each word of it, and 
every intonation. A long list of vice-pres- 



A Cluh of One 24^ 

idents was then read — including more than 
a hundred well-known names — represent- a hwidred 
ing intelligently all interests and all pro- naines. 
fessions of the metropolis. The names 
most conspicuous for intelligence, and 
honor, and wealth, were all there, — not 
one, it seemed to me, was omitted. I lis- Listemdat- 
tened to each one attentively as it was ST^iJ/" 
read out. Now a conspicuous and hon- 
ored name in Wall street was pronounced. 
Now the name of a flour merchant in 
South street. Now a name well known in 
importing circles. Now a familiar name in 
"the swamp," — the leather region. Jour- 
nalism was represented in a few famous Aiunterests 

. represented. 

names. The law, and medicme, and sci- 
ence, and architecture, and ship-building, 
and the pulpit, were all honorably repre- 
sented. Of course there was a generous 
sprinkling of politicians and office-holders. 
I thought, with what prodigious care the 
list had been selected, — showing a minute 
acquaintance with every interest of the 
great town and its best representatives. 
Then followed a dozen or more resolutions, Theremark- 

T . -1 ^^^^ resolu- 

expressmg the sense of the people m the twns. 
Nation's extremity. They were read with 
much intelligence by the secretary, in a 
rich full voice, and appeared to be dis- 



246 



A Club of One 



tinctly heard by each one of the vast con- 
course. Every word seemed to have been 



Expressing coHsidcred and weighed, — expressing from 

a ihoroug 
knmvledge of 
the crisis. 



Cut and pol- 
ished. 



Surpris- 
ingly com- 
pendious. 



A distin- 
guished ex- 
senator. 



His remark- 
able power. 



first to last a thorough knowledge and 
comprehension of the situation, in all its 
complication and gravity. I thought how 
long the writer of the resolutions must 
have carried them in his brain and in his 
pocket, and how many enlightened persons 
he must have consulted in the course of 
their preparation. They were cut and pol- 
ished with the skill of a lapidary. The 
veins of thought were as conspicuously ap- 
parent as the lines in a precious stone. 
Their scope was broad, and their observa- 
tion and purpose surprisingly compendious. 
Patriotism, experience, and statesmanship 
uttered themselves throughout. The re- 
markable resolutions would have filled one 
of the broad columns of The Tribune. 
Then Daniel S. Dickinson was called on 
for a speech. The distinguished ex-senator 
was at his best. I had never before seen 
his mind in such trim. He seemed able to 
say what he thought, and to express all 
shades and phases of meaning. There was 
logic that went to the marrow of whatever 
he touched, and sarcasm and wit that en- 
forced it. His remarkable power as an im- 



A Club of One 24^ 

passioned orator never before had struck me 
as it did then. His speech was a long one, 
and more than senatorial in breadth and in- More than 
cisiveness. The old flag filled the heavens 
as Rodman Drake unfurled it there. The 
vast assemblage was electrified. Then Sal- 
mon P. Chase, the secretary of the treas- Thesecre- 
ury, was called out. Six feet in height, trVJuryf 
he appeared that day to be six feet six in 
his majestic proportions. He was indeed 
statuesque, as he stood for a time, in the 
midst of the vast human sea, seemingly un- 
impassioned, without uttering a word. His His great 
great two-storied brain seemed teeming bZL. 
full of important things to be said. I had 
heard him speak many times, and had lis- 
tened to him many an hour in conversa- 
tion. Always circumspect in speech be- 
fore an assembly, he appeared on this 
occasion to be unusually and excessively umisuaiiy 

"^ deliberate. 

deliberate. His words, every one, had 
prodigious weight, as they fell, one after 
another, from his lips, in solemn cadence. 
The knowledge and experience of many 
years were close behind every sentence. 
The scholar, the jurist, the statesman, — The scholar, 

Ti -,.,. - TT* tJie jtirist. 

all were embodied in the orator. His 
thought was as clear as the mountain air, 
his passion was incandescent. Once or 



248 A Club of One 

twice he unconsciously put back his head 

and gazed, — as I have seen a lion look 

off apparently thousands of miles into his 

The saga- nativc junsfle, — the sasjacious statesman 

cious states- jo o 

^nan. secmiug to see, through the smoke of bat- 

tle and turn of events, the upshot of the 
mighty struggle. His speech, also, was a 
long one, — longer by half than any I had 
ever before heard him deliver. At the con- 

rhe great clusion of it the great audience dissolved, 

audience dis- , -^ , t-it-i 1 

solved. and I opened my eyes. I had not changed 
position in the slightest. The moon was 
riding the sky through the top of the same 
pane exactly as when I had seen it last, 
— filling it full with its overflowing glory. 

The remark- Thc wholc thing, iu reality, would have 

able mental . . ^ . ^ ^ 

operation, occupicd four or fivc hours, and, reported, 

would have filled many columns of the daily 

journal. It is not possible that I could 

^ have been unconscious for more than a 

minute or two. I got up in terror, shut 

Sends for a down thc wiudows, and sent off for a heroic 

physician. ... ,_t, . , 

physician. What wonder that I express 
amazement at the human soul, and lose 
myself trying to conceive the perpetual 
growth and expansion of the immortal 
substance, when relieved and emancipated 
A hopeful from all earthly entanglements, limita- 

interroga- . , . . - 

tion. tions and miseries .-' 



A Club of One 249 

My wife — But I have scrupulously re- 
frained from gossiping about her in these 
hours of my idleness. She herself is too a tribute to 
wise to keep any sort of personal record. 
As was said of the Duchess de Praslin's 
murder, "What could a poor fellow do with 
a wife who kept a journal but murder 
her ? " 



his wife. 




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C - ^ 



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